A venue to share my discoveries about the Michigan-born novelist, newspaperman, poet, and dramatist, Leonard Lanson Cline (1893-1929).
God Head was published on 10 October 1925. I have a short write-up at Wormwoodiana here , and the below repeats this blog's entry for 5 January 2019. Leonard Cline's first novel was on the first list of six books published by the newly-founded Viking Press of New York for the latter half of 1925. Cline's book was the fourth on the list, and it appeared on October 10th, 1925. The spine and front…
Here is a poem Cline sent from the Tolland Connecticut jail in December 1927, three months into his one year sentence for manslaughter (he had pleaded guilty to manslaughter just before a trial on charges of first degree murder would have commenced in mid-September 1927). It was sent to Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., editor of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch , where Cline worked in 1924-25. Some of the imagery…
It reads as follows: So who were Carol and Garth Hyatt? The short answer is some fellow newspaper writers. Garth Browne Hyatt (1888-1931) was on the staff of the Detroit News in 1917, which is probably where he met Cline. He was then married to his first wife, with whom he had a son and a daughter. He married Carol Rose Willis (1896-1989) on 6 November 1926 in Lake County, Indiana. She had…
Leonard Cline worked at the Detroit News from late 1916 through early 1922. His wife Louise kept a scrapbook of his newspaper writings for the bulk of that time, and in some empty pages in the middle of the scrapbook I found the following drawing: Is it Cline? I'm not sure. The receded hairline and the jutting ears look right, but his ubiquitous eyeglasses are not present, and it appears to show a…
Vega To. T.S. These winter evenings it is far Down in the west, the steadfast star; And late at night so low it lies The houses hide it from my eyes As I go down the lonely street, The white snow creaking under my feet. But summer nights when I explore A moon-drenched field, a star-washed shore, It marks the zenith in the sky, Our great blue steadfast star; and I Remember how that August night We…
Leonard Cline matriculated as a freshman at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the fall of 1910. He was 17 and a half years old. Before that he had attended Loyola College in Montreal (at the time an eight-year classical school). He presumably graduated in the spring or early summer of 1910, but how long was he there? The mentions of Loyola in his papers are few. In the summer of 1925,…
This poem first appeared in Scribner's Magazine , for January 1926. It was reprinted in After-Walker (1930). Fear Not Love . . . Were they vain that roof and door, Tower and temple built their town, Laughing, vaunting neither war, Flood nor fire should cast it down? Though time strew their stone again, That was Babylon. Were they vain? And they two that flower and stem Growing vowed no law or…
Leonard Cline's posthumous poetry collection After-Walker (1930) was submitted to the publisher a few years earlier under the title Haunted House . (For more, see here .) Here is what would have been the title poem of the proposed collection. Haunted House Laugh you will and it's laugh you may, And sure it's a moonstruck tale to tell; But the farmhouse stands there even today And the crooked tree…
Cline's review of Waldo Frank's odd novel Chalk Face appeared on the book page at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , while Cline was on the staff there, on 18 October 1924. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Waldo Frank Essays Modern Ghost Story There is a sense of madness and at the same time a drug-like ecstasy always in the strange style of Waldo Frank. His sentences come twisted in…
It has to be at least ten years since I found a new (to me) publication of anything by Leonard Cline, so I was overjoyed to find that Cline had given a choice blurb for a book published by his own publisher, the Viking Press. The book is Roots by Eduardo Zamacois, translated from the Spanish (the book had appeared in 1927 as Las Raices ). The translation is uncredited, but the UK edition of 1930…
In my previous post, I noted that Leonard Cline and John Wilstach certainly knew each other by April 1928. The reason is that Cline sent a letter to Wilstach about his serial "Rope Neckties" that had appeared in three consecutive issues of Argosy All-Story Weekly , 21 April, 28 April, and 5 May 1928. We know this because when the novel was printed in book form, as Rope Neckties in 1939, Wilstach…
In the early 1990s, as I began exploring the papers of Leonard Cline, I found an interesting undated and unsigned carbon copy of a letter to The Saturday Review about their review of The Dark Chamber. Reading the letter, I thought at first that Cline himself might have written it, for the tone, and some of the sentiments, are similar to Cline's. Also, I had before me the review in The Saturday…
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE On December 10th 1926, Leonard Cline and his second wife Katharine Gridley (who were married only a month earlier on November 9th) purchased a large amount of land in rural Mansfield, Connecticut, to the north of Willimantic. On December 23rd, The Willimantic Chronicle reported on the sale by the Tryson Real Estate Agency of “Koulaga place on Wormwood…
A rather breathless and overwrought book review, from the 4 September 1927 issue of The New York Herald Tribune . The last paragraph is the best. Donald Douglas (1893-1966) was a journalist, teacher and author. His novels include The Grand Inquisitor (1925), a metaphysical and psychological thriller, and The Black Douglas (1927), a historical novel. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE…
800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Polypimple’s Apocalypse The Rev. Horace Polypimple sat alone in his room, in the boarding house on Catherine street, just behind the red brick church of the Friends of Jesus. Late into the night he brooded, biting his nails and scratching his acne. These devices acted as a mild sedative upon him. He was pledged…
The first reprint (since its original publication in 1927) of The Dark Chamber was in mass market form by Popular Library of New York. Though undated, it came out in October 1972. Here is the cover: There is no credit for the cover art, but it's style looks somewhat familiar. Anyone have any theories about who the artist was? Interestingly, the same art was used on the German translation of John…
Cline's poem, "On a Picture", was written in 1911, and published in Poems (1914). In Cline's own copy of the book, he noted that the inspiration was the 1887 painting "Empress Theodora" by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845-1902). Here is the poem, and the painting. On a Picture Her eyes are like twin pools of silent waters Within a forest, hedged by cypress trees, At night, when all the tempests…
Inside the Tolland County Jail The Mansfield (Connecticut) Historical Society Newsletter for March 2010 published an article by Tolland town historian Barbara Cook on Leonard Cline. Last year it was posted, with a few photos (of Cline's house, and of the inside of the jail itself), on the Mansfield Historical Society website, here . The article is based on many newspaper accounts, and is fairly…
The short version: Most blogs I'm involved with have a "Follow by email" option. The "Follow by email" function worked (fine) via Google's Feedburner since I started using it. Google is eliminating Feedburner in July, which means I have had to find an alternate source. I have transferred this following-by-email function to follow.it. I already have seen anomalies, and hope they won't be numerous.…
It's a rare event when I find a Cline publication that is entirely new to me. I think the last one was nearly ten years ago. But here is a new one, a poem entitled "Pizzicato" from The Gargoyle , April 1921, a humor magazine of the University of Michigan. Cline attended the University of Michigan from 1910 through 1913, as part of the Class of 1914, though he never graduated. A "pizzicato" is a…
A quick note here to call attention to a new edition of God Head , translated into Finnish by Juri Nummelin, and recently published (as Jumalan pää ) by Oppian of Finland. I can't say I understand by their cover who they think the audience for this book is, but it appears that they are presenting this book as something appreciated by readers of zombie novels. (Not I think an appropriate decision.)…
Here is Cline's review of Tales of Intrigue and Revenge (1925), by Stephen McKenna, as published in the Books section of The New York Herald Tribune for 27 September 1925. It is an artfully backhanded review, wherein Cline basically says that only six of the sixteen stories published in this collection are worth reading. “A Brilliant Residuum” Tales of Intrigue and Revenge . By Stephen McKenna.…
When Cline visited his sister in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the autumn of 1925, he gave to his twelve year old nephew a book, The Red Cord: A Romance of China (1925), by Thomas Grant Springer, Cline inscribed it as follows: "Nov. 3, 1925. For Jack Wierengo . . . not because it is a perfect book; but because, reading it, you may learn something about a beautiful people; and wishing to know more,…
The Viking Press paid for this full page advertisement for The Dark Chamber in Publishers' Weekly for the July 30th 1927 issue, about two weeks before the book was to be published. It shows their special support for both Cline and his novel.
Gretchen Mount I have so far been unable to source this review to its original appearance. What I have is a four-page typed transcript, made by Cline, and headed "Gretchen Mount: for Detroit Free Press." It probably dates from around September 1927, for The Dark Chamber was published on August 15th, 1927. It is possible that the review was sent in advance to Cline by his old Detroit friend…