Today (March 5) marks the birth of Henry S. Whitehead. He was born in 1882 and passed away in November of 1932. Whitehead was a contributor of Weird Tales and a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft. The year before Whitehead died, Lovecraft visited him at his Florida home and quite liked him. Had he not died so young, Whitehead would have been a major author of the weird and fantastic. I consider him to be so, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
Whitehead served for a time as the Archdeacon for the Episcopal Church in the Virgin Islands. This posting would become a major influence on his fiction, as most of it dealt with voodoo and other fantastic aspects of Caribbean life.
Whitehead wrote no novels, but his short fiction is worth seeking out. I reviewed “Seven Turns in a Hangman’s Rope” a few years ago. Fortunately, his work is available in electronic format. If I get a chance, I’ll try to read something else by him.
Glad you were on top of this, Keith! I meant to write a post about Whitehead, but got too busy. REH was also a Whitehead fan, as I recall.
I think you’re right about REH being a Whitehead fan. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by him.
I bought the collection from Wordsworth, Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead. Never read it all, but the ones I did were solid.
I haven’t read a lot of Whitehead’s work, but what I have read has been, as you say, solid. Definitely an author who deserves to be more widely read.