Joseph Payne Brennan (December 20, 1918 – January 28, 1990) was an American writer of fantasy and horror fiction, and also a poet. Of Irish ancestry, he was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and he lived most of his life in New Haven, Connecticut, and worked as an Acquisitions Assistant at the Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University for over 40 years.Stefan Dziemianowicz, "Joseph Payne Brennan" in Pringle, David, ed. St James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers. Detroit MI: St James Press, 1998, pp. 87-88. Brennan published several hundred short stories (estimates range between four and five hundred), two novellas and reputedly thousands of poems.Donald M. Grant, "Joseph Payne Brennan: The Quiet Achiever" (1982), p. 36 His stories appeared in over 200 anthologies and have been translated into German, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish.James Andersen, "Joseph Payne Brennan: An Interview" Fantasy Review 7, No 9 (WN 72)(Oct 1984), 9-10 He was an early bibliographer of the work of H. P. Lovecraft.
Brennan's first professional sale came in December 1940 with the publication of the poem "When Snow Is Hung", which appeared in the Christian Science Monitor Home Forum, and he continued writing poetry up until the time of his death. As a fiction writer, Brennan started out writing westerns stories for the pulps, then switched to horror stories for Weird Tales in 1952. He began publishing his own magazine Macabre, which ran from 1957 to 1976. Several of his short story collections concern an occult detective named Lucius Leffing in the vein of Carnacki and Algernon Blackwood's John Silence.
His 1958 collection Nine Horrors and a Dream, containing the stories "Slime" (which has been reprinted at least fifty times) and "Canavan's Back Yard", is celebrated in an essay by Stephen Gallagher in the book Horror: 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. Stephen King has called him "a master of the unashamed horror tale".Jacket blurb, Joseph Payne Brennan, The Adventures of Lucius Leffing, Hampton Falls, NH: Donal M. Grant, Publisher, 1990 Don D'Ammassa considers that "His stories were noteworthy for their effective development of suspense and terror without the excesses of violence which characterise modern horror fiction".Don D'Ammassa, "Obituary: Joseph Payne Brennan", SF Chronicle (May 1990), p. 12
Brennan's personality was described in an interview as "reserved: he is friendly but not flamboyant. He is most comfortable with his wife (Doris) and his dog (Chaucer). He is a gentle, softspoken, modest man. But beware, for beneath that ordinary exterior lurks the mind of a modern master of fright."Anderson, James. "Joseph Payne Brennan: An Interview". Fantasy Review 7, No 9 (Whole No 72)(October 1984), 9-10.
Life and work
Early career: 1940s: Western Stories Brennan has stated in numerous autobiographical snippets that a chance encounter with the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe is what sparked his interest and ambition to engage in writing himself. Shortly after he was born in Bridgeport, CT, in 1917 (the same year of birth as his fellow Weird Tales writer Robert Bloch), Brennan's family moved back to New Haven, where he lived thereafter. He was forced to drop out of college in his sophomore year owing to an illness in the family; thus, he was largely self-educated.Alan Warren, American Gothic: Joseph Payne Brennan" in Darrell Schweitzer, ed, Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II, Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1988, p.108 He then took a position in the advertising department at The New Haven Journal-Courier (1937–1939).
Little is known about how Brennan went about submitting his early manuscripts, although Brennan used many different agents in the course of his career. Before and during World War II, Ulrich Troubetzkoy acted as his de facto agent as well as the guardian of his manuscripts while he was stationed overseas. Later he used, with varying degrees of rapport and success, Laurence R. D'Orsay, Jack Schaffner, the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Kirby McCauley, Kenneth S. White and R. Dixon Smith. Troubetzkoy was born Dorothy Livingston Ulrich in Hartford, Connecticut in 1914, and known professionally as Ulrich Troubetzkoy after her 1941 marriage to Prince Serge Troubetzkoy; she met Brennan when they both worked at the New Haven Journal-Courier in the late 1930s.
Recognized editors of his work include Dorothy McIlwraith, Frank Belknap Long, Charles L. Grant, Peter Haining, Helen Hoke, Robert Arthur, Les Daniels, August Derleth, Ruth Iodice, Lilith Lorraine, Gustav Davidson, F. E. S. Finn, Stuart David Schiff], Gerald W. Page, George Abbe, and Loring Williams.
Brennan began working at the Yale University Library in 1941; this was interrupted by military duty in the U.S. Army where he served three years (including one year with General Patton's Third Army in the 26th Infantry Division (United States) ("Yankee Division")), during which time he received a unit citation of five battle stars, including one for the Battle of the Bulge.Jacket bio, Joseph Payne Brennan, Nine Horrors and a Dream, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1958 Brennan resumed work at Yale in 1946 and began to write and publish western-themed short fiction for the pulp markets. His debut pulp western appearance occurred in December 1948 with the yarn "Fast-Gun Freedom", in Western Short Stories. Brennan made his first professional fiction sale with the western yarn "Endurance", which appeared in Masked Rider Western (Feb 1950). A total of 26 western yarns by him can be found in 25 pulp titles.
1950s: Poetry and supernatural work
When the market for western fiction dried up in the mid-1950s, Brennan simply turned his hand to the supernatural.Grant, Donald M. "Joseph Payne Brennan: Quiet Achiever". The World Fantasy Convention (Program Booklet) 1982, pp. 36–37
In 1950 Brennan established the little poetry journal Essence, which was published irregularly, with 47 issues spanning a period of 28 years (1950–1977). Among the many poets who contributed over the years were George Abbe, Duane Ackerson, Doris Philbrick Brennan, Judson Crews, August Derleth, Alan Donovan, Alfred Dorn, Janet Fox (Scavenger's Newsletter), Skip Galloway, Joseph Joel Keith, Lilith Lorraine, Joseph Francis Murphy, Rebecca Newth, William J. Noble, Lori Petri, Dorothy Quick, Sydney King Russell, Wade Wellman (son of Manly Wade Wellman), Mary Winter, and Celeste Turner Wright. Also included were reprints of the work of David Park Barnitz, Arthur Rimbaud, and others. Brennan was on the staff of Jack Schaefer's Theatre News for the year 1940.
His first book, Heart of Earth, also issued in 1950, was a collection of poems.
That same year Frank Belknap Long wrote to Brennan suggesting that they meet, because Long was going to stay at Short Beach following his mother's death. The environs of Yale University were closely bound up with Long's ancestral heritage - his maternal forebears the Manfields were among the city's earliest settlers, and this gave him much in common with Brennan. Long's intention was to discuss with Brennan the antiquities of New Haven, their mutual interest in H.P. Lovecraft and writing in general. This meeting did not occur, but they did meet at a later time in a restaurant opposite Yale University Campus.Frank Belknap Long. "Foreword", to Brennan's The Chronicles of Lucius Leffing. West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, Publisher, 1977 pp. 11-12. Long and Brennan would not meet again until the time of the First World Fantasy Convention (1975 in Providence).
Brennan belatedly appeared on the pages of Weird Tales with the short-short "The Green Parrot" in the July 1952 issue of that magazine, to which Brennan became a regular contributor. In fairly quick succession this tale was followed up by his novelette "Slime", the dark whimsy "On The Elevator", and "The Calamander Chest". These tales appeared only months before the magazine's demise deprived him of a professional market for any further such fiction. Much later Brennan was also collected in the Zebra Books revival of the magazine, Weird Tales #2, with the Leffing case "The Nursing Home Horror", retitled "Fear".
Late 1950s and 1960s: Macabre House, Macabre magazine and Arkham House
In 1955 Brennan tried his hand at a new endeavour, and his imprint Macabre House was launched with the publication of the pamphlet H.P. Lovecraft: An Evaluation (now incredibly scarce, like many of the other Brennan-published efforts).
Macabre House published its own magazine, Macabre. According to Donald M. Grant, "together with its companion magazine, Essence, it (Macabre) provided the opportunity and the encouragement for publication of poems and stories by writers seeking recognition in a period that lacked a vehicle for development. Macabre ran for 23 issues and just shy of 20 years; issues are prized collector's items. Macabre was founded in 1957 to "work for the revival" of Weird Tales. He also wanted Macabre to "serve as a rallying place for all those devoted to horror and the supernatural". Twenty three issues were released, the last one in 1976. Issues of Macabre included Brennan's "Lucius Leffing" stories, and well as other of his well-known stories and articles on H. P. Lovecraft": "Time and Lovecraft" and "Lovecraft on the Subway". The ninth issue (Summer 1961) also featured an article on H.P. Lovecraft by Brennan. Other contributions included "Wei-Thogga" by Mike Ambrose, "Ice People" by George Dendrinos, "Balthor the Dreamer" by W. Paul Ganley, "The Floating Coffin" by John Perry, and "Day of Departure" by Frank Sherry. Other contributors include Ramsey Campbell, Robert Caspar, Lawrence R. Griffin, Helen T. Hill, Leslie Nelson Jennings, Lilith Lorraine, Joseph Francis Murphy, William J. Noble, Violet Hiles Ringer, Richard L. Tierney, Lawrence A. Trissel, and Elizabeth Weistrop. Several stories in Macabre have been cited as essential to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
The Macabre House imprint also published most of Brennan's horror fiction in the 1950s to early 1970s, such as the volumes The Dark Returners (1959), Scream at Midnight (1963) and The Casebook of Lucius Leffing (1973).
August Derleth had been an early correspondent and so Brennan sought publication for his first fiction collection with Arkham House; Derleth assembled this volume as Nine Horrors and a Dream (1958). Arkham House would later publish one of his volumes of poetry, Nightmare Need (1964) and Brennan's fifth volume of supernatural tales, Stories of Darkness and Dread (1973). Additionally, the 1961 poetry collection Wind of Time was issued by Derleth under the Hawk and Whippoorwill Press imprint, a subsidiary of Arkham House. As early as 1961, Brennan had more entries than any other poet in Derleth's anthology Fire and Sleet and Candlelight - fourteen poems. Stefan Dziemanowicz has written that "his volumes Nightmare Need and Creep to Death rank as high watermarks of modern macabre verse".
Brennan was repeatedly turned down for grants to help produce and sustain his "little" magazines, Essence and Macabre. These two outlets were carried on for decades by his own determination and the assistance of numerous private contributions. The only organization to contribute substantially was the Virginia Humanities Foundation, through the auspices of Margaret Haley Carpenter [1917-1985], and Nan Cooke Carpenter.
Lucius Leffing (occult detective) series