Henry S. Whitehead

Henry St. Clair Whitehead (March 5, 1882 – November 23, 1932) was an American Episcopal minister and author of horror, some non fiction and fantasy fiction.

Biography Henry S. Whitehead was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on March 5, 1882, and graduated from Harvard University in 1904 (in the same class as Franklin D. Roosevelt). As a young man he led an active and worldly life in the first decade of the 20th century, playing football at Harvard University, editing a Reform democratic newspaper in Port Chester, New York, and serving as commissioner of athletics for the AAU.

He later attended Berkeley Divinity School in Middletown, Connecticut, and in 1912 he was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church. During 1912-1913 he worked as a clergyman in Torrington, Connecticut. From 1913 to 1917 he served as rector in Christ's Church, Middletown, Connecticut.

R. H. Barlow collected many of Whitehead's letters, planning to publish a volume of them; but this never appeared, although Barlow did contribute the introduction to Whitehead's Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales (1944).

Reception Whitehead is culturally important for his sustained introduction of voodoo into popular culture, via his stories.

Lovecraft expressed admiration for Whitehead's work, describing Whitehead's work as "weird fiction of a subtle, realistic and quietly potent sort" and praising Whitehead's story The Passing of a God as "perhaps representing the peak of his creative genius".

His work is still highly regarded today by writers and critics, and Stefan Dziemianowicz describes Whitehead's West Indian (mostly Virgin Islands) tales as "virtually unmatched for the vividness with which they convey the awe and mystery of their exotic locale".

Works

Short fiction "The Intarsia Box" (1923) Adventure "The Wonder-Phone" (1923) People’s Magazine "Christabel" (1923) Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine "The Door" (1924) Weird Tales "Tea Leaves" (1924) Weird Tales "The Wonderful Thing" (1925) Weird Tales "The Thin Match" (1925) Weird Tales "The Cunning of the Serpent" (1925) Adventure "Sea Change" (1925) Weird Tales "The Gladstone Bag" (1925)The Black Mask "The Fireplace" (1925) Weird Tales "The Projection of Armand Dubois" (1926) Weird Tales "Jumbee" (1926) Weird Tales "Across the Gulf" (1926) Weird Tales "Gahd Laff!" (1926) The Black Mask 1926 "The Shadows" (1927) Weird Tales "West India Lights" (1927) West India Lights "The Left Eye" (1927) Weird Tales "Obi in the Caribbean" (1927) West India Lights "The Cult of the Skull" (1928) Weird Tales "The Return of Milt Drennan" (1929) Mystery Stories "The Lips" (1929) Weird Tales "Sweet Grass" (1929) Weird Tales "Black Tancrède" (1929) Weird Tales

"The People of Pan" (1929) Weird Tales "The Tabernacle" (1930) Weird Tales "The Shut Room" (1930) Weird Tales "Machiavelli—Salesman" (1931) Popular Fiction Magazine "The Passing of a God" (1931) Weird Tales "The Trap" (1931) (with H.P. Lovecraft) Strange Tales "The Tree-Man" (1931) Weird Tales "Black Terror" (1931) Weird Tales "Hill Drums" (1931) Weird Tales "The Black Beast" (1931) Adventure "Cassius" (1931) Strange Tales (based on an idea by H. P. Lovecraft) "Mrs. Lorriquer" (1932) Weird Tales "No Eye-Witnesses" (1932) Weird Tales "Seven Turns in a Hangman's Rope" (1932) Adventure "The Moon-Dial" (1932) Strange Tales "The Great Circle" (1932) Strange Tales "Sea-Tiger" (1932) Strange Tales "The Chadbourne Episode" (1933) Weird Tales "The Napier Limousine" (1933) Strange Tales "Ruby the Kid" (1933) Nickel Western "Scar-Tissue" (1946) Amazing Stories "The Ravel 'Pavane'" (1946) West India Lights "Williamson" (1946) West India Lights - written 1910, first published posthumously "--In Case of Disaster Only" (1946) West India Lights "Bothon" (1946) (with H.P. Lovecraft) West India Lights

Poetry "Litrachoor," The Writer, August 1926

Non-fiction "Editorial Prejudice Against the Occult," The Writer, October 1922 letter in The Camp-Fire, Adventure, November 10, 1923 "Certain Mechanical Aids for the Writer," The Writer, March 1926 "The Happy Ending," The Writer, July 1926 "The Occult Story" in The Free-Lance Writer's Handbook (1926) ""Two Religions" of Anglicanism," The Commonweal, February 16, 1927 "A Few from the Chest," The Writer, October 1927 "The 'Project' Method," Writer's Digest, January 1928 "Scrapped Stories," Writer's Digest, April 1928 "Negro Dialect of the Virgin Islands," American Speech, Vol. 7, No. 3., February 1932

Collections Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales (1944) West India Lights (1946) Passing of a God and Other Stories (2007), Ash-Tree Press, edited by Douglas A. Anderson and Stefan Dziemianowicz. Tales of the Jumbee: and Other Wonders of the West Indies (2009), Wildside Press Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S. Whitehead (2012), Wordsworth Editions.

Novels for boys Pinkie at Camp Cherokee (1931, Putnam's)