Jepson, Edgar
Entry updated 25 November 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1863-1938) UK schoolteacher and author, prolific in various popular genres from 1895; father of Selwyn Jepson, grandfather of Fay Weldon; some of his books are of sf interest. Half-Ruritania, half-Dystopia, Varandaleel, the imaginary land-locked Asian country in The Keepers of the People (1898), has been ruled for generations by Englishmen; the novel, an anti-Feminist tale in which woman are treated as inferior creatures, encroaches on sf from several angles. The Horned Shepherd (1904) and No. 19 (1910; vt The Garden at 19 1910) are both fantasies, the first about a new incarnation of a god which has also been Pan, the second about the attempts of a magus (who resembles Aleister Crowley [1875-1947]) to summon Pan; a later fantasy, Miss Timmins and Lord Scredington (fixup 1927), also invokes Crowley. In The Moon Gods (1930), a Lost Race tale, twentieth-century aviators discover a Carthaginian city in the African desert.
It has not been firmly established whether or not Jepson's first book may have been a Satire, Sir Jones: A Story of Modern Oxford (1885) as by Jean F Darrell Poges. [JC/BS]
Edgar Alfred Jepson
born Bloomsbury [now London]: 28 November 1863
died London: 11 April 1938
works
- Sir Jones: A Story of Modern Oxford (Oxford, Oxfordshire: F H Plummer, 1885) as by Jean F Darrell Poges [Jepson's authorship of this title has not been firmly established: hb/]
- The Keepers of the People (London: C Arthur Pearson, 1898) [hb/]
- The Horned Shepherd (Wembley, Middlesex: The Sons of the Vine, 1904) [pb/nonpictorial]
- The Mystery of the Myrtles (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1909) [hb/]
- No. 19 (London: Mills and Boon, 1910) [hb/]
- The Garden at 19 (New York: A Wessels and Bissell Co, 1910) [vt of the above: hb/H B Boehm]
- Miss Timmins and Lord Scredington (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1927) [fixup: hb/Laurence East]
- The Moon Gods (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1930) [also appeared later, June-August 1932 Blue Book, as by Jepson and Sidney Gowing: hb/]
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