Vernon Theodorus Blake (June 24, 1888 – July 28, 1937) was an US author and occultist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He began his career as a war correspondent for various tabloid newspapers in the American South during World War I. He later achieved a degree of recognition for a series of extremely violent short stories and novels published between 1919 and 1936.
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Blake was born in Greensburg, a small community in St. Helena Parish. His parents perished within a year of each other, while Blake himself was 17; his father Theo Blake died in 1906 in a violent skirmish during the Moro Rebellion on the Philippine island of Mindanao, while his mother Henrietta succumbed to yellow fever one year earlier.[1] Having abruptly lost his entire family, Blake abandoned his home in Greensburg and embarked upon a series of journeys throughout the West Indies, particularly Haiti, Cuba, and Bermuda.
Blake's works are extremely rare due to limited publication; an average run sometimes consisted of no more than 50 copies of a particular work, though production numbers modestly increased as his works became more popular. Many short stories exist, though Blake's constant use of pseudonyms makes identifying a story as his extremely difficult. In some cases these pseudonyms are anagrams of the author's actual name, such as "Karl von Eben" or "LaVern Nobek." More often, however, the names he utilized were utterly prosaic and apparently chosen at random ("Dexter Drake," for instance)[1]. Thus it is difficult to determine just how many stories Blake actually penned. Confusing the issue further is the fact that much of Blake's published fiction was purchased or commissioned by European magazines and translated into foreign languages by local editors.
In the English language, Blake's best-known works are the novels Mortuus, Pieces of Eight, Thanatos and Jungle Drums, followed by his longest and most notorious book, Mortal Remains. Original hardcover editions have been known to surface occasionally (during personal estate sales, for example), but while they are extremely scarce, their actual monetary worth is difficult to assess due to the relative obscurity of the author. Thus, a book for which a knowledgeable collector would pay upwards of $1000 may be sold for less than $20 by a seller who is unfamiliar with Blake's body of work.
One established fact is that Blake struck up - through a mutual acquaintance named Louis de Tessier - a lasting friendship with theatrical writer André de Lorde during a 1919 stay in Paris. The author stated in personal correspondence[2] that de Lorde expressed interest in adapting some of Blake's fiction for use in the Theatre du Grand Guignol, for which de Lorde was a frequent contributor.
Blake's death was apparently never officially recorded, though he was presumed dead following a violent automobile accident near his New Orleans residence in July 1937. The auto involved was Blake's own Nash Motors touring car, which at the time of the single-car collision contained four passengers including Blake himself. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune on July 28, "identification was not possible due to the severe degree of bodily damage sustained by the passengers involved," though Blake was finally declared deceased by virtue of the testimony of several "reliable witnesses" who placed him in the vehicle prior to the accident.[3]