The
prolific anthologist Peter Haining (1940-2007) is known not only to have cut
corners in filling up his anthologies, but to have gone so far as to make up
references and fabricate texts. Both of
these serious problems are especially visible in his collections of Bram Stoker
materials, where he has given deliberately false citations as well as having significantly
re-written some of the texts he has supposedly reproduced. I’ve written
elsewhere of a few other instances of his outrageous frauds (for one, where he
lifted one author’s story from an early Weird
Tales and claimed it was by Dorothy Macardle and from an Irish magazine,
see here).
Now
I’ve happened upon yet another example of Haining’s premeditated deceit. I’ve
recently been looking closely into the writings of Guy Endore (1900-1970),
author of The Werewolf of Paris
(1933). In Haining’s anthology Werewolf: Horror Stories of the Man-Beast
(London: Severn House, 1987) there is a story “The Wolf Girl” bylined “Guy Endore”. Haining notes:
“The werewolf theme had evidently fascinated Endore for some years for, when barely out of his teens, he wrote the story, “The Wolf Girl”, which is included in this book. It was originally published in The Argosy magazine in December 1920 and, despite its stylistic failings, is interesting in that it is based on an Alaskan legend, as well as demonstrating an early stage of Endore’s exploration of the narrow dividing lines between horror and sexual attraction.”
All
of which sounds well and good. But it
doesn’t bear scrutiny. No story of such title
appeared in any of the December 1920 issues of The Argosy (nor in any of the surrounding years), nor did Endore’s
byline appear at all in The Argosy,
as can be confirmed in Fred Cook’s The
Argosy Index 1896-1943. In any case, Guy Endore’s earliest known works all
appeared as by “S. Guy Endore”, the first initial standing for Samuel. This byline appeared on several novels he
translated—including Alraune (1929), by Hanns Heinz Ewers—beginning in
1928. Endore’s first known short stories
published in periodicals appeared in 1929. He stopped using the initial around
1930.
The
story “The Wolf Girl” also poses questions. First, it reads nothing like Endore’s
much more polished and literary style.
Second, it is basically a pulp-styled retelling of a portion of Clemence
Housman’s “The Were-Wolf”, first published in 1890, with the setting superficially shifted to
Alaska (though there is nothing about “The Wolf Girl” that makes it
characteristically Alaskan). It is possible that Haining found "The Wolf Girl" in
some obscure magazine, and thought no one would contest his claim of source and
author. It is also possible that Haining himself adapted the Housman story into
this inferior filler, which he then passed off as by Guy Endore (whose name
might help to sell a few more copies of Haining’s anthology). A few things are, I think, certain, and one is
that the story did not appear where Haining said it did. Another is subjective
but (I think) no less certain: Guy Endore didn’t write “The Wolf Girl”. Finally, it has become increasingly apparent
that you can’t trust Peter Haining on anything.
