The mid-to-late Thirties is the high point of ARGOSY for me, with consistently good covers and great writers. But those serials! I guess it didn't matter much when you could go down to the newsstand and buy the new issue every week, but now they're the bane of a collector's existence. Lots of fantastic reading whenever you manage to put together all the installments of a serial, though. This particular issue has three serials running, all by popular authors: Theodore Roscoe (one of the best pulp writers), Jack Mann, and Charles Rice McDowell. The cover-featured novella is by Roy de S. Horn, an oddly bylined but excellent writer/editor. The cover is by Rudolph Belarski. Looks like another typically fine issue of ARGOSY from this era.
3 comments:
Roy de S. Horn led an adventurous life. Born in Boston, Georgia, he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1915. He wrote the words to the song "Blue and Gold" which is played at every academy athletic event. I've always been a bit curious about him as my father was born in that tiny town in Georgia in 1906 Here is an obit from the Annapolis newspaper The Capital from December 31, 1973:
Roy deS Horn Cmdr. Roy deSaussure Horn, USN (ret.), 79, of 16 Revell St., Annapolis, died of pneumonia on Friday at the Naval Hospital in Annapolis. Born in Boston, Ga., he was a 1915 graduate of the Naval Academy. He served on cruisers, battleships, on the Presidential yacht Mayflower and the old frigate Constellation. He retired as a lieutenant in 1919. Cmdr. Horn began his literary career in 1919 as a magazine fiction story and article writer on both the Navy and American History. He returned to the Navy in 1939 as an instructor in English, history and government at the Naval Academy. Returning to inactive duty in 1946. he joined the Naval Institute staff as its first fall-time professional managing editor.
Hi, Richard, thanks for the kind comments.
Roy De S. Horn was my great-grandfather -- his family moved to Thomas County from Cheraw, SC sometime between 1855 and 1861 (based on his diaries in the Southern Manuscript Collection at UNC) and there are a few generations of Horn graves in the Boston cemetery (and Raifords--his mother was Asenath Anne Elizabeth Raiford, daughter of Rev. Capel Raiford--and possibly Iveys as well). Uncle Roy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, though, along with his 2nd. wife, Anne. I was always vaguely aware of his fiction writing but didn't begin collecting the old magazines until about 10 years ago (haven't completed a serial yet!!) but knew of him primarily as an editor for Doubleday (writing was a side gig as I recall) and editor of The Naval Review after the war. His sister, Annabel Horn, was a classics scholar and co-author of Latin textbooks. The obit didn't say why he retired from the Navy in 1919 -- it was an accident that cost him the sight of one eye, according to my mother.
Many thanks for this comment. One of the things I enjoy about this blog is that it allows me to be in touch not only with writers I admire but also in cases like this their family. I've enjoyed what I've read by your great-grandfather and need to read more. I have his Robin the Bombardier collection published by Altus Press.
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