deFord, Miriam Allen
Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author, Editor.
(1888-1975) US author, editor and feminist, who was active as a journalist and editor from 1912; married to the distinguished nonfiction author Maynard Shipley (1872-1934) from 1921; she worked as a researcher for Charles Fort between 1922 and his death in 1932; she was the San Francisco correspondent for the socialist Federated Press from 1921 to 1956, and a contributing editor to The Humanist. For the educational publisher Haldeman-Julius she wrote and/or edited a number of short books in the 1940s, including Bellamy's Looking Backward Condensed, with a Foreword (1944 chap) (see Edward Bellamy); her publications also include such nonfiction as The Real Bonnie and Clyde (1968). For her fiction, she is probably known better for mystery stories (some award-winning) than for the sf of her later years. She began to publish work of genre interest with "The Neatness of Ann Rutledge" for The Westminster Magazine in 1924, releasing close to eighty sf and fantasy stories over the next decades, mostly in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1951 and 1970, though several tales appeared later. Her two collections, Xenogenesis (coll 1969), which focuses on Gender issues, and Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow: Collected Stories (coll 1971), feature several Time Travel tales, and some sharp examinations of themes such as nuclear devastation and sexual roles, conducted in a crisp, clear-cut style that sometimes lacks grace but never vigour. She also edited Space, Time and Crime (anth 1964), a collection of sf stories with mystery elements. [JC]
see also: Women SF Writers.
Miriam Allen deFord
born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 21 August 1888
died San Francisco, California: 22 February 1975
works
collections and stories
- Xenogenesis (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969) [coll: pb/Richard Powers]
- Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow: Collected Stories (New York: Walker and Company, 1971) [coll: Science Fiction and Fantasy Library ed Hans Stefan Santesson: hb/Richard V Corben]
- The Eel (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2010) [story: ebook: first appeared April 1958 Galaxy: na/]
- One Way (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2010) [story: ebook: first appeared March 1955 Galaxy: na/]
works as editor
- Edward Bellamy. Bellamy's Looking Backward Condensed, with a Foreword (Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1944) [chap: cut, with commentary: pb/nonpictorial]
- Space, Time & Crime (New York: Paperback Library, 1964) [anth: pb/Richard Powers]
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