Today, November 19, marks the birth of Mary Elizabeth Counselman (1911-1995). She died on November 13, six days shy of her 84th birthday. She wrote short fiction with much of her early stories appearing in Weird Tales. “The Three Marked Pennies” is probably her best known story.

I haven’t had time to read any of her work today, but I have two books sitting on my shelf from Valancourt Press that are on the docket for the holidays. Monster, She Wrote is a nonfiction book full of brief biographies of women who wrote horror and science fiction. It has launched a series of collections under that title, the second of which is The Women of Weird Tales. Several of Ms. Counselman’s stories are included.

I wrote a post a few years ago about women in the early days of the fantasy and science fiction fields, so the reviews of these books will act as followups to that one.