A forgotten old school

[randy_byers]

For as long as I have been reading fantasy, Perley Poore Sheehan has been one of the "greats" of the great old days when Bob Davis was creating a new literature of the imagination in the pages of the Munsey magazines. Yet it was as a writer of popular romances that his contemporaries knew -- and forgot -- him.

Why was this? Granted that any of those few writers of fantasy would be remembered because he was one of a small circle, why has Sheehan been persistently ranked with Merritt, Austin Hall, Homer Eon Flint, "Francis Stevens"?

-- P. Schuyler Miller, introduction to the 1953 Polaris Press edition of Sheehan's The Abyss of Wonders (1915), although apparently Miller originally wrote this piece in 1931 (when 1915 would hardly have been the "great old days")

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Douglas A. Anderson handed me Francis Stevens' story "The Elf-Trap" (and reprinted it in his book Tales Before Tolkien), and in general has been talking her up for a long time. I've also read some Merritt, and I've at least heard of the others - except Sheehan, sorry.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, I thought that was the great irony -- or perhaps pathos -- of Miller's remarks. In 1953 Sheehan was still remembered in the fantasy field, but who remembers him now? However, it turns out I've seen a movie based on one of his novels -- The Whispering Chorus, directed by Cecil B. DeMille in 1918 -- and he also wrote the screenplay for the 1923 adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

But who remembers any of Miller's list of Munsey magazine fantasy writers? One thing I was thinking of as a pondered this group is that being remembered really means still being in print. That's true for Merritt and Francis Stevens (who has a collection out from one of the university presses), but I'm not sure about the others. I have a fan-published copy of Francis Stevens' "The Labyrinth" on my TBR pile, and I'm definitely curious about her. I also have fantasies of putting together a collection of Flint's stories at some point.

Oh, and to show you what a sad case I have become, I picked up the Sheehan book largely because of Miller's introduction and especially his comments about Bob Davis. Polaris Press turns out to be an imprint of Fantasy Press that only published two books, at least according to Wikipedia.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Merritt was always a prominent name in his time, I think, and Stevens gains cachet from her mysterious background. But Hall and Flint are no more than names to me.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Flint is really the odd duck in this group, since he was less a fantasist than a proto-scientifiction writer. I have a feeling (based on your comments on Doc Smith) that you wouldn't care much for him.

Merritt's "The Moon Pool" was a huge hit immediately upon publication, and you're certainly right that he was prominent in his day. He even had a magazine named after him at one point.