Bangs, John Kendrick
Entry updated 14 October 2024. Tagged: Author, Theatre.
(1862-1922) US editor, playwright, poet and author, extremely prolific under several names from about 1880, though he increasingly used his own; most of his books are primarily of interest as humorous fantasies, though some are sf or sf-like. His editorial career with Harper's New Monthly Magazine (and its offshoots) lasted from 1888 to 1901, during which period he was involved in publishing work by Arthur Conan Doyle (whose work he parodied: see below), Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain and others. He is now best remembered for the first volume of his Styx sequence, A House-Boat on the Styx: Being Some Account of the Divers Doings of the Associated Shades (1896), which provides a model for many stories featuring the famous dead as posthumous or Immortal protagonists in Planetary Romance venues, where endless exemplary adventures are experienced along rivers without apparent end, fantasticating and softening the end-stopped Archipelago structure of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). A suggestive line of association can be drawn through The Seen and Unseen at Stratford-on-Avon (1914) by William Dean Howells (whom he published) and the works of Thorne Smith, on to the various Riverworld tales and novels of Philip José Farmer and the Black Current trilogy by Ian Watson and the Confluence series by Paul McAuley and others (see also Dying Earth). The sequence continues with [for subtitles see Checklist] The Pursuit of the House-Boat (1897), The Enchanted Type-Writer (coll of linked stories 1899) and Mr Munchausen (coll of linked stories 1901). Alan Moore included the shade of Bangs in the House-Boat setting in one episode of his remarkable Science Fantasy Comic sequence Promethea (1999-2005), whose heroine Sophie Bangs is a descendant of the author.
Though it is clearly fantasy in its cast of fairies and the like, the Jimmieboy sequence – comprising In Camp with a Tin Soldier (1892), Half-Hours with Jimmieboy (coll of linked stories 1893), Bikey the Skicycle & Other Tales of Jimmieboy (coll of linked stories 1902) and Jimmieboy's Tool Chest (coll of linked stories 1907) – focuses on fantasticated Inventions and upon Jimmieboy's interest in how these things work, so that the series – which includes a dream trip to Saturn (see Outer Planets) – constantly resembles sf without being quite answerable, rather in the fashion of L Frank Baum, who may have been influenced by early Bangs. In the Idiot sequence beginning with Coffee and Repartee (coll 1893), a boarding-house resident who habitually deflates the pretensions and philosophies of his fellow boarders, in a voice that oddly prefigures Groucho Marx's, often describes, and tells Club Stories about, fantastic Inventions. The Sherlock Holmes/Raffles sequence of Parodies [see Checklist] involving Sherlock Holmes is nonfantastic.
Various singletons are of mixed fantasy/sf interest, like Peeps at People: Being Certain Papers from the Writings of Anne Warrington Witherup (coll 1899), comprising Satirical invented encounters with the German emperor to be, Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lang and others, Emblemland (1902) with Charles Raymond Macauley (1871-1934), a Wonderland fantasy set on a desert Island, Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream (1907), or The Autobiography of Methuselah (1909). Ghost stories and other supernatural fictions are assembled in volumes like The Water Ghost and Others (coll 1894), Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others (coll 1898); The Dreamers: A Club [for subtitle see Checklist] (coll of linked stories 1899) describes with examples the formation of Club Story cohort who tell each other tales based on their dreams; Olympian Nights (coll 1902), in which the gods use Mars as a golf course; Jack and the Check Book (coll 1912) assembles Twice-Told tales [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. [JC]
John Kendrick Bangs
born Yonkers, New York: 27 May 1862
died Atlantic City, New Jersey: 21 January 1922
works
series
Styx
- A House-Boat on the Styx: Being Some Account of the Divers Doings of the Associated Shades (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1896) [Styx: hb/Peter Newell]
- The Pursuit of the House-Boat: Being Some Further Account of the Divers Doings of the Associated Shades, Under the Leadership of Sherlock Holmes, Esq. (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1897) [Styx: hb/Peter Newell]
- The Enchanted Type-Writer (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1899) [coll of linked stories: Styx: hb/Peter Newell]
- Mr Munchausen: Being a True Account of Some of the Recent Adventures Beyond the Styx of the Late Hieronymus Carl Friedrich, Sometime Baron Munchausen of Bodenwerder, as Originally Reported for the Sunday Edition of the Gehenna Gazette by its Special Interviewer the Late Mr Ananias Formerly of Jerusalem and Now First Transcribed from the Columns of that Journal (Boston, Massachusetts: Noyes, Platt and Company, 1901) [coll of linked stories: Styx: hb/Peter Newell]
Jimmieboy
- In Camp with a Tin Soldier (New York: R H Russell and Son, 1892) [Jimmieboy: hb/E M Ashe]
- Half-Hours with Jimmieboy (New York: R H Russell and Son, 1893) [coll of linked stories: Jimmieboy: hb/]
- Bikey the Skicycle & Other Tales of Jimmieboy (New York: Riggs Publishing Company, 1902) [coll of linked stories: Jimmieboy: illus/hb/Peter Newell]
- Jimmieboy's Tool Chest: A Tale of Christmas Night (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing, 1907) [Jimmieboy: hb/]
The Idiot
- Coffee and Repartee (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1893) [coll: The Idiot: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Idiot (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1895) [coll: The Idiot: hb/nonpictorial]
- Coffee and Repartee & The Idiot (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1899) [omni of the above two: The Idiot: hb/]
- The Idiot at Home (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1900) [coll: The Idiot: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Inventions of the Idiot (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1904) [coll: The Idiot: hb/]
- The Genial Idiot: His Views and Reviews (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1908) [coll: The Idiot: hb/]
- Half Hours With the Idiot (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company, 1917) [coll: The Idiot: hb/]
Sherlock Holmes/Raffles
- Mrs Raffles: Being the Adventures of An Amateur Crackswoman: Narrated by Bunny (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1905) [coll of linked stories: Sherlock Holmes/Raffles: hb/]
- R Holmes & Co: Being the Remarkable Adventures of Raffles Holmes, Esq, Detective and Amateur Cracksman by Birth (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1906) [coll of linked stories: first appeared 1905 Harper's Weekly as "The Remarkable Adventures of Raffles Holmes": Sherlock Holmes/Raffles: hb/Sydney Adamson]
- Shylock Holmes: His Posthumous Memoirs (Arlington, Virginia: The Dispatch-Box Press, 1973) [coll: first appeared 1903 The New York Herald: Holmes/Raffles: pb/]
Mollie and the Unwiseman
- Mollie and the Unwiseman (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: H T Coates and Co, 1902) [Mollie and the Unwiseman: hb/]
- Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J B Lippincott Co, 1910) [Mollie and the Unwiseman: hb/Grace G Wiederseim]
individual titles
- Roger Camerden: A Strange Story (New York: J G Coombes, 1887) [hb/]
- Toppleton's Client, or A Spirit in Exile (New York: Charles L Webster and Company, 1893) [hb/]
- Mr Bonaparte of Corsica (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1895) [last chapter is set in Styx: hb/H W McVickar]
- Emblemland (New York: R H Russell, 1902) with Charles R Macauley [hb/]
- Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1907) [hb/Lewis Carroll: Albert Levering]
- The Autobiography of Methuselah (New York: B W Dodge and Company, 1909) [hb/F G Cooper]
collections
- New Waggings of Old Tales (Boston, Massachusetts: Ticknor and Co, 1888) with Frank Dempster Sherman, writing together as Two Wags [coll: hb/]
- Tiddledywink Tales (New York: R H Russell and Son, 1891) [coll: hb/]
- The Water Ghost and Others (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1894) [coll: hb/]
- Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1898) [coll: illus/various: hb/Peter Newell]
- Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2003) [coll: drops two stories from the above: pb/]
- The Dreamers: A Club: Being a More or Less Faithful Account of the Literary Exercises of the First Regular Meeting of that Organization (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1899) [coll of linked stories: hb/Edward Penfield]
- Peeps at People: Being Certain Papers from the Writings of Anne Warrington Witherup (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1899) [coll: illus/hb/Edward Penfield]
- The Booming of Acre Hill; And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1900) [coll: illus/hb/Charles Dana Gibson]
- Over the Plum-Pudding (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1901) [coll: hb/nonpictorial]
- Olympian Nights (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1902) [coll: hb/Albert Levering]
- Andiron Tales (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John C Winston Co, 1907) [coll: hb/]
- Jack and the Check Book (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1911) [coll of linked stories: illus/hb/Albert Levering]
- A Little Book of Christmas (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Co, 1912) [coll: illus/hb/Arthur E Becker]
plays
- The Bicyclers; And Three Other Farces (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1896) [plays: coll: hb/Peter Newell]
- The Real Thing; And Three Other Farces (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1909) [plays: coll: hb/]
links
- John Kendrick Bangs
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Twice-Told
- Picture Gallery
previous versions of this entry