Alabama Book Covers (15): Robert McCammon

Robert McCammon grew up in East Lake and graduated from Banks High School. After his first novel Baal appeared in 1978, he became one of the most successful writers of horror fiction as that genre boomed from the 1970's into the 1990's. In 1992, after publishing thirteen novels, he tired of the horror writer pigeonhole and took a ten-year break. In 2002 he returned to publishing his fiction with Speaks the Nightbird. He has published ten more books since then. Thus the covers below are only a small sample of his output. 

You can learn more about McCammon, his reading schedule and books on his website. He continues to live in the Birmingham area, one of the rare very successful Alabama authors who has remained in the state his entire career. 

I must admit I've only read one McCammon novel so far, They Thirst, and I highly recommend it. The book is both juicy horror and well-written. I have several other McCammon titles on my shelves and fully intend to read those too.

Alabama Book Covers (14): Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles

Have you been wondering about a book cover that combines Alabama, author Ray Bradbury and Mars? Well, so have I and here it is below. 

This post is another in a series that highlights tenuous connections to our state. You can see two others here and here. There are and will be more; they're fun to do.

In his long and prolific career Bradbury wrote such classic novels as Farenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He also wrote numerous short stories that have filled many collections. Bradbury died in 2012, and one of his many honors occurred that year. NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars, and the site was named Bradbury Landing.

Bradbury's first novel The Martian Chronicles appeared in 1950 and consisted of short stories published in the late 1940's that he wove together with new material. Earth has become so troubled that colonization of Mars has begun. Conflict develops between the human arrivals and the indigenous Martian population. Sound familiar?

Among other adaptations, the book has appeared on radio and the opera stage. In January 1980 a television adaptation with Rock Hudson and other stars appeared on NBC over three nights. Bradbury called it "just boring". I remember enjoying it, but haven't seen it in a long time.  

The Bantam paperback edition below is the first one issued by that publisher; others would follow until at least 1980. And there's "Alabama", sandwiched between Ohio and California.....

New York: Bantam, 1951 

Source: Wikipedia 

Alabama Book Covers (13): Col. Prentiss Ingraham

In October 2015 I posted an entry in this series on Joseph Holt Ingraham, who wrote numerous popular novels before the Civil War and also served as an Episcopal priest in Mobile and elsewhere. Now I'd like to cover his son Prentiss, a Confederate veteran, soldier of fortune and extremely prolific author of dime novels who also had a connection with Alabama.

The son was born near Natchez, Mississippi, on December 28, 1843. He began his formal education at St. Timothy's Military Academy in Maryland, where John Wilkes Booth was a classmate. Then Ingraham returned to Mississippi and further education at Jefferson College in Washington. Founded in 1811 in the Mississippi Territory, that school operated almost continuously in one form or another until finally closing in 1964.

After college Ingraham enrolled at the Medical College of Alabama, which had opened in November 1859, thus making his appearance in Alabama. The Civil War interrupted his education there, and he enlisted in Wither's Mississippi Regiment. He rose to the rank of lieutenant and suffered wounds at Port Hudson and the Battle of Franklin.

After the war Ingraham spent several years as a soldier of fortune in hot spots around the world. He served under Juarez in Mexico during the rebellion against Maximillian; with Austrian forces in their war with Prussia; in Crete against the Turks, in the Khedive's army in Egypt, and in both the Cuban army and navy. In Cuba he was captured by Spanish forces and sentenced to death, but managed to escape.  

Perhaps tiring of all this activity, Ingraham had settled in London around 1870. Here he began his first attempts at writing stories and satiric sketches. Finding little success, he had moved to New York City by 1875. There he met and married Rose Langley, an author, composer and artist. They would eventually have a son and two daughters.

Ingraham continued writing in New York City, but by 1881 the wanderlust apparently returned. He headed west, where he encountered Buffalo Bill Cody among others. He soon joined Cody's Wild West Show. He also met the Powell brothers Frank, George and Will. Ingraham would later write fiction based on the lives of all these men.

Ingraham's first dime novel, The Masked Spy, had appeared in 1872. After his western adventures, he and his family lived in Easton, Maryland, and Chicago until his final days at the Beauvoir Confederate Home in Biloxi, Mississippi. During this period Ingraham wrote vast amounts of fiction.

He is said to have written 600 novels and 400 short novels issued by dime novel publisher Beadle and Adams and others. Ingraham wrote under his own name as well as a number of pseudonyms. He claimed to have written a 70,000 word novel in a week. Some of his novels were leaner revisions of his father's florid novels.

E.Z.C Judson, writing as Ned Buntline, is credited with discovering Buffalo Bill and writing the first novels about him. Yet Ingraham wrote dozens of novels about Cody and is primarily responsible for creating the legendary character. 

Examples of some of Ingraham's Buffalo Bill novels can be seen below, along with some on other subjects. A few novels can be found online here and here. More information about Ingraham can be found here and here. A master's thesis by Phyllis J. Gernhardt, "Prentiss Ingraham and the Dime Novel" was completed at Ball State University in 1992. He really deserves a full biography.

Ingraham died at the Confederate home on August 16, 1904, of Bright's disease. He is buried in the cemetery on the grounds of Beauvoir, formerly the home of Jefferson Davis. The home was extensively damaged by Hurricane Katrina. 

The Find-A-Grave entry for Prentiss is here [note misspelling of first name on the gravestone] and his father's is here. 

Unless otherwise noted, cover images are from Texas Tech University's Southwest Collection Archive. 

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Mississippi History Now

Source: eBay 

Source: Etsy.com 

"One of his most historically interesting protagonists appears in “Darkie Dan, the Colored Detective; or, The Mississippi Mystery” in an August 1902 edition of the The New York Dime Library. Beadle & Adams originally printed the story in 1881. Manumitted after saving his young mistress from a pack of wolves, Dan remains in faithful service to the Mississippi planter family, rescuing them from many trials involving the villainous criminal known as the “King of Diamonds.” Dan is one of the earliest African-American protagonists of the mystery genre, if not the first."

Source: University of Mississippi library exhibit

You can read the full text here. 

Source: The Commoner [Lincoln NE] 16 September 1904

Alabama Book Covers (12): William Bradford Huie

Born in Hartselle in 1910, William Bradford Huie had a long, varied and controversial career as a writer of novels, non-fiction and investigative journalism. He graduated from Morgan County High School and in 1930 the University of Alabama. Soon he and new bride Ruth had settled in Birmingham where he wrote for the Post newspaper for several years. In 1936 he and a colleague started the pro-business magazine Alabama, the News Magazine of the Deep South. Although Huie stayed less than a year, the magazine continued publication until 1955.

Huie served in the Navy in World War II, and his experiences would give him lots of material for future novels and non-fiction. He spent much of the 1950's as a writer and then editor at the American Mercury Magazine and also traveled on lecture tours and made various television appearances.

By the second half of the decade he and Ruth had settled back in their hometown of Hartselle. Huie had already begun what might be called the Civil Rights period of his career. He and fellow Alabama native and writer Zora Neale Hurston attended the appeal and second trial of Ruby McCollum in Florida in 1954. McCollum, a wealthy and married black woman, had killed her white physician lover. The judge had issued a gag order, which Huie was accused of violating. He was arrested and spent a brief time in jail. 

He covered the murder of black teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 and the Freedom Summer murders in that state in 1964. Huie interviewed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s killer, James Earle Ray; King had written the introduction to Huie's book about the Freedom Summer deaths. In recognition of his efforts, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in his yard in 1967. He was interviewed in 1979 about these events for the documentary Eyes on the Prize. In 1997 a documentary about Huie appeared, I'm in the Truth Business.

Huie spent the rest of his life in Alabama. After Ruth died in 1973, he and his second wife lived in Scottsboro and then Guntersville where he died. He is buried in Hartselle; the public library was named after him in 2006. His papers were donated to Ohio State University. 

Below the photographs are some covers of Huie's books with comments on a few. 

William Bradford Huie [1910-1986]

Huie is buried in the Hartselle City Cemetery. 

Published in 1967, this novel was filmed in 1974 with Lee Marvin and Richard Burton in the cast. A recent assessment of this film by David Cranmer can be found on his blog Criminal Element. 

Published in 1942, Mud on the Stars was Huie's first novel and very autobiographical.

One of Huie's best known books, Slovak was published in 1954. In 1974 NBC broadcast a television movie version starring Martin Sheen. He won an Emmy for the performance, but refused to accept it since he felt actors' work should not be compared. Son Charlie had a small role in the production.

The novel Revolt of Mamie Stover (1951) follows a woman from Mississippi who rises through prostitution in Hollywood to become a war profiteer in Honolulu. This book, The Americanization of Emily (1959) and Hotel Mamie Stover (1963) form a trilogy with the same narrator. In 1956 Jane Russell played the title character in the film version of Revolt. 

Huie published this novel set in World War II in 1959. James Garner brought his considerable charm to the film version in 1964. Starring along with him were Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas and James Coburn. 

Alabama Book Covers (11): "Alabam'" by Donald Henderson Clarke

So far all of the books and authors in this series have had solid connections to Alabama. This one is a bit more tangential. 

Donald Henderson Clarke [1887-1958] was an American journalist and novelist who wrote mysteries and romances. Many of his novels were adapted for the movies. 

The Internet Movie Database notes that the New York Supreme Court declared Henderson's 1933 novel Female obscene, a decision upheld on appeal. The book was filmed in that same year with Ruth Chatterton in the title role. 

Clarke published many other novels, including ones with titles like Confidential [1936], The Chastity of Gloria Boyd [1946] and Impatient Virgin [1931]. His books have been reprinted numerous times. You can see wonderful covers of some paperback editions here. Born in Massachusetts, Clarke was living in Florida when he died. 

Alabam' or Alabama first appeared in 1934. According to Clarke's Wikipedia entry, the book was translated into Czech that same year and published as Missis Alabam.

I have not seen this book and have no idea what it's about, but that blonde on the cover below may be the title character. There are a couple of inexpensive paperback copies of the book available on Amazon; perhaps I'll order one and find out.

Join me next time for the Further Adventures of Alabama Book Covers!

Alabama Book Covers (10): Augusta Evans Wilson

Back in April 2015 I posted an item about the films based on Augusta Evans Wilson's 1867 novel--and massive bestseller--St. Elmo. Now I'd like to include her in this ongoing blog series, "Alabama Book Covers."

In that earlier post, I included this background on Wilson:

"She's one of Mobile's legendary residents; although born in Columbus, Georgia, she spent most of her life in the city. She published nine novels before her death in 1909, and some of them such as St. Elmo and Beulah made her one of the bestselling American novelists of her day. 

Like many female authors of that time, she began writing to supplement her family's income. St. Elmo sold over a million copies and made her the wealthiest female writer in America before Edith Wharton. Only Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur sold better among American novels in the nineteenth century.

There is a town in Mobile County named after the novel. Several of her works, including St. Elmo, can be found via Project Gutenberg. A recent book about Evans is The Life and Works of Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, 1835–1909 by Brenda Ayres [Ashgate, 2012]."

I've included comments on some of the individual illustrations below. 

Augusta Evans Wilson [1835-1909]

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Inez, the first of Wilson's nine novels, appeared in 1855 and was not a success. She began writing the book when she was fifteen.  

Beulah was Wilson's second novel and a big seller. The story describes a young woman's crisis of faith, much like Wilson's own, and is set in an Alabama city much like Mobile. 

In addition to being a bestselling book, St. Elmo was filmed three times by 1923. Three other Wilson novels were also filmed. 

Wilson's third novel, published in 1864, was a pro-Confederacy story and was issued by different publishers in the North and South.

Wilson was going blind as she wrote her last novel, published in 1907. She dictated it to a niece. 

This novel was Wilson's first after the Civil War, published a year after her 1868 marriage to a successful Mobile businessman.

Her next to last novel appeared in 1902. 

This collection of Wilson's letters was published in 2002.

Alabama Book Covers (9): William March

Novelist and short story writer William March is probably best remembered for one novel published in 1954, The Bad Seed. Actually, adaptations in other media are probably better known than the book and author. That same year Maxwell Anderson wrote a two-act play from the book that ran for 334 performances on Broadway before closing in September 1955. In 1956 a film starring Patty McCormick in the title role was released and was a hit for Warner Brothers in both the U.S. and Great Britain. The ABC network premiered a version for television in 1985. The story is a classic evil-child tale that still resonates today despite the use of the idea by endless horror movies.

March was a Mobile native born in September 1893 as William Edward Campbell. A highly decorated U.S. Marine in World War I, March built a career in business after the war. Before his death in New Orleans in May 1954, March published several novels and many short stories. Most were set in Alabama. 

March wrote about his war experiences in his first novel, Company K. A film adaptation by Robert Clem appeared in 2004. Clem has filmed several other works related to Alabama. March's short story "The Little Wife" was adapted for television three times by 1955. 

March's papers are in the Hoole Special Collections at the University of Alabama. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Tuscaloosa. The Encyclopedia of Alabama and Wikipedia entries offer good introductions to his life and work. Roy Simmonds' book The Two Worlds of William March was published in 1984.

William March ca. 1933

Source: Wikipedia