A forgotten old school
Nov. 24th, 2008 06:37 pmFor 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")
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")