WHITEHEAD, Henry S.

£375 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales. First edition, with the ownership inscription of Douglas Webster on the front free endpaper, "Douglas Webster, Sauck City, 10.3.45," and his note "From August", referring to August Derleth, a writer and publisher who co-founded Arkham House in order to bring attention to the work of his friend, H.P. Lovecraft and publish other authors of "weird fiction". Active in the fandom scene in its infancy throughout the 1930s, Douglas Webster (1920-2004) edited The Fantast from 1941 to 1942 and published a single-issue, early Lovecraft fanzine, Cthulhu, in 1942. Loosely inserted is a bus timetable from his hometown, Aberdeen. This collection of short stories was issued posthumously and was Whitehead's first published collection. "Stories of voodoo and obeah set in the West Indies comprise the body of work for which the ministerial and short-lived Whitehead is remembered by those too-few persons familiar with his fiction... Although his production was limited, his stories regularly appeared in Weird Tales, and the quality of the tales was excellent! The stories in this book are the cream of that fine crop" (Jaffery).

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