I read about this story (or so I thought) in Robert Sampson's book Deadly Excitements, Shadows and Phantoms. He talks about a story, "Mermaid", in Sea Stories magazine featuring Captain Leonidas Tripp as a mermaid impersonator and says this story is in the vein of the Jorkens stories by Lord Dunsany. Now I'm a sucker for these kind of tall tales, having gotten hooked on them after reading a similar series by P.G. Wodehouse, the Mulliner stories.
So I went looking for it and found this instead. Looks like George Allan England recycled plots, this one from 1908 becoming the new story in 1926. Now I don't know how his writing improved over the years, but this is an ok yarn. Nothing remarkable in 1908, but nothing bad either. If you have a copy of Sea Stories magazine dated November 1926, could you share the story with me so that I could compare the two and share them?
Enjoy the 1908 story, The Mermaid by George Allan England, here.
Pulp magazines, authors and their stories. Adventure and Detective pulps.
The Captain Leonidas Tripp stories are excellent sea stories, perhaps George Allan England's best work. I've read quite a few of them and enjoyed them all. The Captain is a crusty old sea dog who hates women because as his adventures show, they are nothing but trouble. At least he keeps getting into trouble when they are around. The stories are narrated in a very humorous vein and most are novelet length.
ReplyDeleteSEA STORIES had about a dozen but they were also in PEOPLES in the early 1920's, around a dozen also. Then when PEOPLES died, they were continued in COMPLETE STORIES for a few issues. So there were over 20 novelets, all of them very funny and full of harebrained sea adventures as narrated by Captain Tripp. An unjustly forgotten series, one that should be reprinted in this golden age of pulp reprints.
Sounds very interesting and i hope I'll be able to read those stories some day. Do you know if they ever appeared in book form?
DeleteI've never seen any of the stories in book form but they certainly deserve to be reprinted. One problem may be the outrageous humor and plots of the stories. Really bizarre and unusual. Also many of the stories are quite long.
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