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.

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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

Collections

References

External links