Henry S. Whitehead

Henry S. Whitehead
Born	March 5, 1882(1882-03-05) Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States
Died	November 23, 1932(1932-11-23) (aged 50)
Occupation	short story writer, rector
Nationality	American
Period	1905 to 1932
Genres	Horror, Fantasy

Rev. Henry St. Clair Whitehead (March 5, 1882 – November 23, 1932) was an American writer of horror fiction and fantasy.

Biography

Henry S. Whitehead was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on March 5, 1882. He graduated from Harvard University in 1904. He led an active and worldly life, playing football at Harvard (he graduated there in the same class as Franklin D. Roosevelt). He also edited a Reform democratic newspaper in Pt. Chester, New York and served as commissioner of athletics for the AAU.

He later attended Berkeley Divinity School of Middletown, Connecticut and was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1912. He served as acting archdeacon of the Virgin Islands from 1921 to 1929. While there, living on the island of St. Croix, Whitehead gathered the material he was to use in his later writings of the supernatural. A correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft, Whitehead's stories appeared from 1924 onwards in Weird Tales, Strange Tales, Adventure and other pulp magazines.

In later life, Whitehead lived in Dunedin, Florida, as rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd. Robert H. Barlow collected many of his letters, planning to publish a volume of them, but this was never published; although Barlow did contribute the introduction to Whitehead's Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales (1944). H.P. Lovecraft was a particular friend of Whitehead's, visiting him at his Dunedin home for several weeks in 1931. Lovecraft said of him: "He has nothing of the musty cleric about him; but dresses in sports clothes, swears like a he-man on occasion, and is an utter stranger to bigotry or priggishness of any sort."

Works

Short fiction

• "The Door" (1924)
• "Tea Leaves" (1924)
• "The Wonderful Thing" (1925)
• "The Thin Match" (1925)
• "Sea Change" (1925)
• "The Fireplace" (1925)
• "The Projection of Armand Dubois" (1926)
• "Jumbee" (1926)
• "Across the Gulf" (1926)
• "The Shadows" (1927)
• "West India Lights" (1927)
• "The Left Eye" (1927)
• "Obi in the Caribbean" (1927)
• "The Cult of the Skull" (1928)
• "The Lips" (1929)
• "Sweet Grass" (1929)
• "Black Tancrède" (1929)
• "The People of Pan" (1929)
• "The Tabernacle" (1930)
• "The Shut Room" (1930)
• "The Passing of a God" (1931)
• "The Trap" (1931) with H. P. Lovecraft
• "The Tree-Man" (1931)
• "Black Terror" (1931)
• "Hill Drums" (1931)
• "The Black Beast" (1931)
• "Cassius" (1931)
• "Mrs. Lorriquer" (1932)
• "No Eye-Witnesses" (1932)
• "Seven Turns in a Hangman's Rope" (1932)
• "The Moon-Dial" (1932)
• "The Napier Limousine" (1932)
• "The Great Circle" (1932)
• "Sea-Tiger" (1932)
• "The Chadbourne Episode" (1933)
• "Scar-Tissue" (1946)
• "Bothon" (1946)
• "The Ravel 'Pavane'" (1946)
• "Williamson" (1946)
• "--In Case of Disaster Only" (1946)
• "Bothon" (1946) (with H.P. Lovecraft)

Collections

• Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales (1944)
• West India Lights (1946)

References

• Jaffery, Sheldon (1989). The Arkham House Companion. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, Inc.. p. 8. ISBN 1-55742-005-X. 
• Chalker, Jack L.; Mark Owings (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd.. p. 27. 
• Joshi, S.T. (1999). Sixty Years of Arkham House: A History and Bibliography. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. pp. 26–27. ISBN 0-87054-176-5. 
• Ruber, Peter (2000). Arkham's Masters of Horror. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. pp. 154–158. ISBN 0-87054-177-3. 
• Nielsen, Leon (2004). Arkham House Books: A Collector's Guide. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc.. pp. 51–52. ISBN 0-7864-1785-4. 
• "ISFDB". http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Henry%20S.%20Whitehead. Retrieved 2007-01-03. 

External links

• Henry S. Whitehead at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Barrett, Mike. "West Indian Frights: The Fiction of Henry S. Whitehead" [1]