George Allan England

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George Allan England (1929).

George Allan England (born February 9, 1877 in Fort McPherson , Nebraska ; died June 26, 1936 in Concord , New Hampshire ) was an American writer, best known for his science fiction stories, which were in circulation at times were comparable to the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs .

Life

England was the son of the military chaplain George Allen England and Hannah Pearl, née Lyon. After attending the English High School in Boston , he studied at Harvard , where he made his bachelor's degree in 1902 and was honored with admission to the Phi Beta Kappa , and in 1903 he graduated there with a master's degree . After graduating, he worked for the insurance company Mutual Life for a short time . He became ill with tuberculosis at an early age and quit his job and began writing stories while trying to cure his illness in the Maine forests. As early as 1903 he had published a volume of poetry ( Underneath the Bough ), from 1905 the first stories appeared, including The Time Reflector about a kind of time telescope with which one can take a look into the past. Further stories have appeared, now mainly in The All-Story Magazine and other Frank Andrew Munsey's pulp magazines , especially Munsey's Magazine , The Cavalier , People's Favorite Magazine and The Scrap-Book .

England traveled a lot in the following years and stayed in England, France, Italy and Cuba, among others. These trips served at least partially for research. Although England is mainly known today as the author of fantastic stories, adventurous travel stories actually made up a considerable part of the stories he published, the number of which is estimated at 250 to 300 in total. His travels and research to places surrounded by mystery and romance are the basis for England being sometimes referred to as an explorer and treasure hunter. There is no evidence that he seriously acted in this sense. A series of travelogues that he wrote about the islands off the American east coast for the Saturday Evening Post , and which were collected in Isles of Romance in 1929 , also belongs in this context . In it he reports on better-known and lesser-known islands, including "treasure islands" such as the Dry Tortugas .

England was a staunch socialist , which, as with Jack London , was clearly reflected in some of his stories, such as The Golden Blight (1912) and The Air Trust (1915), which deal with the destruction of gold and an air monopoly. For the Socialist Party of America he ran for Congress in 1908 and in 1912 for governor of Maine.

In 1931 it was reported that he would give up writing and henceforth make a living as a chicken farmer, which then found its way into secondary literature. In fact, he had told a newspaper reporter and aspiring writer that a chicken farm made more money than a writer. According to another legend, he would not have died in the hospital, but disappeared on a treasure hunt. England's health had already deteriorated in 1928, and he had been nursing at New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord since August 1933 . He died of encephalomalacia , presumably as a result of a previous stroke.

England had been married to Almeda Agnes Coffin (1877-1948) since 1903 and had a daughter with her, Isabella Pearl England (1905-1985, married Russell). In his second marriage, England was married to Blanche Mildred Porter from 1921. His sister Florence Pearl England Nosworthy was a children's book illustrator.

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In contrast to the case of Burroughs, whose books have been reprinted and filmed for as long as there have been films, England's work has largely been forgotten, although he was a very popular author in his day who was well received outside of the pulp magazines.

His best-known book is Darkness and Dawn , which was serialized in Munsey's The Cavalier in 1912 . The reader interest was so strong that the publisher urged him to write sequels. In 1913 Beyond the Great Oblivion and The Afterglow and in 1914 a book edition of the resulting trilogy was published, a total of approx. 225,000 words of text.

The theme is survival in a post-apocalyptic world. Engineer Allan Stern and his secretary Beatrice Kendrick wake up after a thousand years of sleep in the ruins of New York. An unspecified catastrophe destroyed civilization and culture. Not a single person seems to have survived, which is why Allan and Beatrice decide to build a better, socialist world and become the progenitors of a new human race. The only thing standing in the way of this is a horde of misshapen, cannibalistic creatures, whose description does not make it clear whether they are evolved apes, who now have fire and primitive weapons, or degenerate humans. That is also relatively indifferent, since one thing is completely clear, namely the color of the skin.

"" Why, they look black! " suddenly interrupted the girl. “See there – and there?”

She pointed toward the spring. Stern saw moving shadows in the dark. Then, through an opening, he got a blurred impression of a hand, holding a torch. He saw a body, half-human.

The glimpse vanished, but he had seen enough. "

Indeed, Allan had seen enough.

After the class struggle has been dealt with by the catastrophe, Allan and Beatrice now proceed to the final race struggle. A super explosive called “Pulverit”, conveniently invented by Allan, helps to bring about the genocide. In the course of such battles, the couple changes: from Allan, "a competent but perfectly normal engineer becomes a powerful, god-like warrior chief and lover, while the colorless Beatrice takes off her glasses, so to speak, and blossoms into a busty barbarian queen and ancestral mother of a new race."

After the dark-skinned hordes have been extinguished, a socialist utopia is to be established, populated by whites, of course. The population is not left to Allan and Beatrice alone. In the second volume, on an expedition to the west near Lake Erie , they find the degenerate descendants of the white race who have become albinos in a huge cave . In the third part, Allan and Beatrice will lead you out of the cave and into the light. The Merucaans (derived from Americans ) are initially very light-sensitive and have to seek shelter in caves during the days, but after a few weeks under the " actinic " rays of the sun reflected by the moon, the pigmentation normalizes again and the albinos become real "whites" again ". After some training, with the help of the Merucaans , they succeed in winning the decisive battle against the ape-men. Nothing stands in the way of building the new world. The future prospects are bright and there seem to be no barriers to population growth:

“Some time before long, it will be a million; then two, five, twenty, a hundred, with no racial discords, no mutual antipathies, no barriers of name or blood; but for the first time a universal race, all sound and pure, starting right, living right, striving toward a goal which even we cannot foresee! "

From 1964 a revised version of Darkness and Dawn was published in five volumes, which had been slightly cleared of racism . The first volume of Darkness and Dawn was translated into French in 1977.

bibliography

Darkness and Dawn (trilogy)
  • Darkness and Dawn (1912, also as The Vacant World )
  • Beyond the Great Oblivion (1913)
  • The Afterglow (1914)
  • Revised edition in five volumes:
    • Darkness and Dawn (1964)
    • Beyond the Great Oblivion (1965)
    • The People of the Abyss (1966)
    • Out of the Abyss (1967)
    • The Afterglow (1967)
Novels
  • Beyond White Seas (1909)
  • The Elixir of Hate (1910)
  • The Empire in the Air (1914)
  • The Air Trust (1915)
  • The Fatal Gift (1915)
  • The Golden Blight (1916)
  • The Gift Supreme (1916)
  • Bill Jenkins, Buccaneer (1917)
  • Cursed (1919)
  • The Flying Legion (1920)
  • Adventure Isle (1926)
Short stories
  • The Americano at Cerdos (1905)
  • The Time-Reflector (1905)
  • At the Eleventh Hour (1905)
  • Neevus and the Wolf Pack (1906)
  • The Turning of the Worm (1906)
  • The Cylinder (1906)
  • Family Jars: A Little Tale of Cousinly Amenities (1906)
  • Fire Fight Fire (1906)
  • Vengeance Is Mine (1906)
  • The Garden of Graft (1906)
  • The Lunar Advertising Co., Ltd. (1906)
  • Birds of Passage (1906)
  • The Sorrows of Giuseppe (1906)
  • Jonas (1907)
  • A Game of Solitaire (1907)
  • Burdocks and Blueberries (1907)
  • Thad's Watchers (1907)
  • The Heart of Love (1907)
  • Ammunition-With Care (1908)
  • When Pod Took the Count (1908)
  • The Hand of Blood (1908)
  • Three Hearts and a Head (1908)
  • Midsummer Madness (1908)
  • Art for Art's Sake (1908)
  • The Mermaid (1908)
  • Africa (1908)
  • King Sullivan (1909)
  • My Time Annihilator (1909)
  • The Girl at Gunflint Lake (1909)
  • Pod Flits (1909)
  • A Question of Salvage (1909)
  • Below the Cliff (1909)
  • The House of Transmutation (1909)
  • On Shark's Fin Reef (1910)
  • Day of Days (1910)
  • The Million-Lira Ticket (1910)
  • Failures (1910)
  • The Old Homestead (1910)
  • Personally Conducted (1910)
  • At the Semaphore (1911)
  • He of the Glass Heart (1911)
  • The Chechacko (1912)
  • Bill January (1912)
  • The Million Dollar Patch (1912)
  • The Shackles of Fate (1912)
  • A Passage at Arms (1913)
  • Oil and Water (1913)
  • Pod Slattery's Peril (1913)
  • The Sprucer (1913)
  • The Kimberly Special (1913)
  • The Toss-Up (1913)
  • Fly-Time (1913)
  • Thomas Mittens, Stockholder (1913)
  • The Supreme Getaway (1913)
  • Other Days (1913)
  • Speedy Limit (1913)
  • The Lie (1913)
  • Out of the Real (1914)
  • In Mariners' House (1914)
  • At Allaguash (1914)
  • Meeting Matchett (1914)
  • Trousers and Tragedy (1914)
  • Barbed Wire and Buttermilk (1914)
  • Legs and the Man (1914)
  • The Trap (1914)
  • Even in Death (1914)
  • The Spy (1915)
  • Love! (1915)
  • The Tenth Question (1915)
  • The Plunge (1916)
  • Summer (1916)
  • The Princess Kukupa (1916)
  • A Flyer in Annuities (1916)
  • A Game of Solitaire (1916)
  • Crayons and Clay (1916)
  • The Turning of the Worm (1916)
  • Lobsters and Loot (1916)
  • Knight Errants Up-to-Date (1916)
  • Bill Jenkins, Buccaneer (1917)
  • The Lotus Eater (1917)
  • Relics (1917)
  • Fifteen Minutes (1917)
  • Odyssey, Jr. (1917)
  • The Mysterious Millionaire (1917)
  • Autumn (1917)
  • The Clutch of Tantalus (1917)
  • The Scapegrace (1917)
  • The Affair in Room 99 (1917)
  • Journey's End (1918)
  • On the Rack of Fear (1918)
  • Phonies All (1918)
  • On Grand Cayman (1919)
  • Swamis Twain (1919)
  • Armageddon Valley (1919)
  • Shall - or Shall Not (1919)
  • Bennington's Bath (1919)
  • A Man (1919)
  • Bennington's Lemons (1920)
  • Two Ways (1920)
  • Bennington's Bus (1920)
  • Bennington's Boom (1921)
  • Fifty-Fifty (1921)
  • Recreants Twain (1921)
  • Test Tubes (1921)
  • Powers of Darkness (1921)
  • Webster Said Something (1921)
  • As Ye Plant— (1921)
  • Paid in Advance (1921)
  • The Longest Side (1921)
  • Drops of Death (1922)
  • One Pebble (1922)
  • Bennington's Boy (1922)
  • Sauce (1922)
  • Twists (1922)
  • Leatherbee's Luck (1922)
  • A Polite Question (1922)
  • Luck (1922)
  • Friendship (1922)
  • Bennington, Brute (1922)
  • Fern Shadows (1922)
  • Fits (1922)
  • Compacts of Life (1922)
  • The Broken Arrow (1922)
  • Troubled Waters (1923)
  • Petticoats (1923)
  • The Nogg-Head (1923)
  • Council (1923)
  • Foam (1924)
  • Rust (1924)
  • Honor (1924)
  • Chance (1924)
  • Strong Men and Meat (1924)
  • Dice of Destiny (1924)
  • Feathers (1924)
  • Ch'eng and Foo (1924)
  • Bennington's Bio-Beauty (1924)
  • Roving (1925)
  • Half a Brick (1925)
  • Ice (1925)
  • Sir Galahad of Gila (1925)
  • The Ship That Strayed (1925)
  • Verdict: "Suicide" (1925)
  • Velvet (1925)
  • Bennington's Birds (1926)
  • Powder (1926)
  • Kangaroo (1926)
  • Terror (1926)
  • Elephant (1926)
  • Ivory (1926)
  • At Plug 47 (1926)
  • Divorce (1927)
  • Cork (1927)
  • Johnny Moaner (1927)
  • Dorymates (1928)
  • Bananas (1929)
  • Mamma Told Me (1930)
  • Bennington the Buccaneer (1930)
  • Stand by to Ram (1930)
  • High Explosive (1931)
  • Moriarty (1931)
  • Rough Toss (1932)
  • Locoed (1933)
  • Pipes of Death (1933)
  • The Kalanga of Death (1933)
  • Pieces of the Puzzle (1934)
  • Nothin 'Like Leather (1934)
Poetry
Non-fiction

literature

Web links

Wikisource: George Allan England  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Phi Beta Kappa Authors. In: The Phi Beta Kappa Key , Vol. 5, No. 9 (October, 1924), p. 603.
  2. ^ Maine Register, State Year-Book and Legislative Manual. Tower Publishing, Portland, Maine 1980, p. 82.
  3. ^ The Ogden Standard-Examiner , June 17, 1931, p. 3 . See Noelle Watson, Paul E. Schellinger: Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers. Chicago 1991, p. 253.
  4. ↑ Everett Franklin Bleiler , Richard Bleiler: Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years. Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 1998, ISBN 978-0-87338-604-3 , p. 106.
  5. ↑ Darkness and Dawn: Book I: The Vacant World , Chapter 16: The Gathering of the Hordes .
  6. ^ Mark Pittenger: Imagining Genocide in the Progressive Era: The Socialist Science Fiction of George Allan England. In: American Studies , Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), p. 98.
  7. ↑ Darkness and Dawn: Book III: The Afterglow , Chapter 35: The Afterglow .
  8. ↑ Les ténèbres et l'aurore . In: Jacques Sadoul (ed.): Les meilleurs récits de Famous Fantastic Mysteries. J'ai Lu - Science Fiction # 731, 1977.
personal data
SURNAME England, George Allan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES England, George Allen, Jr. (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort McPherson , Nebraska
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 1936
Place of death Concord , New Hampshire