Lesser-Known Writers of Weird Fiction

I just want to take this opportunity to call some attention to some recent entries at one of my other blogs, on Lesser-Known Writers.  Most of the entries are illustrated with photographs and dust-wrappers. There should be (I would think) a considerable overlap of interest with readers of Wormwoodiana, in that many of the authors covered wrote supernatural fiction and are today fairly forgotten.  Some of the authors wrote for Weird Tales (e.g., Bassett Morgan, and Lyllian Huntley Harris).  Others wrote supernatural novels (Marion Fox, and C. Bryson Taylor).  Interested in cricket fantasies?  Check out the entry for Alan Miller.  The "Labels" function in the right-hand column I use as a kind of index to the blog itself. But here are direct links to some entries of interest to readers of Wormwoodiana:

Vivian Meik (with newly discovered information), author of Devil's Drums (1933)

C. Bryson Taylor, author of the vampire novel In The Dwellings of the Wilderness (1904)

Marion Fox, author of Ape's Face (1914) and The Mystery Keepers (1919)

Blanche Bloor Schleppey, author of The Soul of a Mummy (1908)

Alan Miller, author of Phantoms of a Physician (1934) and Close of Play (1949)

Lyllian Huntley Harris, author of one known short story in Weird Tales, the subject of a later-day fraud

Bassett Morgan, prolific Weird Tales author

And many others, with more to come.

Vivian Meik's DEVILS' DRUMS

Front cover of dust-wrapper

I'm very pleased to say that the expanded edition of Vivian Meik's Devils' Drums (originally published in 1933), which I finished eight years ago (for a different publisher), has now come out in a very attractive edition from Medusa Press.  Not only is the dust-wrapper attractive, but the design on the binding is as well, so I will show scans of both here. Meik's stories of central African voodoo are refreshingly different from most British horror fiction of the 1930s. One story from Devils’ Drums has been filmed. "The Doll of Death" was adapted for the television program, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Directed by John Badham, it was the second to last episode of the series, broadcast on 20 May 1973. 

This new edition is limited to 300 copies.  Order via the Medusa Press website.

Here is the table of contents:

INTRODUCTION – Douglas A. Anderson

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

I           DEVILS’ DRUMS

II         WHITE ZOMBIE

III        AN ACRE IN HELL

IV        THE DOLL OF DEATH

V         WHITE MAN’S LAW

VI        .  . .  L’AMITIÉ RESTE

VII      THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SHADOW

VIII     RA

IX        A HONEYMOON IN HATE

X         DOMIRA’S DRUM

ADDITIONAL STORIES:

XI        THE TWO OLD WOMEN

XII      CHIROMO

XIII     I LEAVE IT TO YOU

Spine and upper cover of binding

Devil's Drums and Veils Of Fear

My knowledge of Vivian Meik, author of the two horror story collections Devil's Drums (1933) and Veils Of Fear (1934) went, until today, no further than an entry on pages 362-363 of Shadows in The Attic: A Guide to British Supernatural Fiction 1820 - 1950 (review here), the entry found on the online Guide to Supernatural Fiction, and having read the two volumes mentioned above.

Meik (1894 - 1955), it turns out, led a fascinating life, at one time returning to the United States with as "One outstanding feature... when he arrived in the US was that he was missing his left eye", according to the very detailed online biography with a wealth of other details The Complete Vivian Meik.

Meik, who died in California, not only wrote the horror story collections mentioned above, but also The People of the Leaves (1931), reviewed in one entry on the Complete Vivian Meik as "...an absorbing account of the obscure Juang or Patuas (meaning people of the leaves or leaf-wearers) tribe located in Orissa. How he fell in love with this extremely shy, withdrawn people makes for fascinating reading..."

A view that was not shared by this contemporary review, published in 1931 in Texas state newspaper San Antonio Express that I found.