Morris, Gouverneur
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1876-1953) US banker, screenwriter and author, great-grandson of the American Founding Father Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816), extremely prolific as an author of short fiction. Some of his work is sf and fantasy, beginning with the Prehistoric SF tale, The Pagan's Progress (1904), whose the hero begins to acquire spiritual values through a moment of Transcendence when he understands that life is eternal, though matter is not. The Voice in the Rice (1910) is a marginal Lost Race novel whose contemporary narrator discovers an Antebellum society in a swamp. Other titles of interest are The Footprint and Other Stories (coll 1908), It and Other Stories (coll 1912) – which includes "Back There in the Grass" (16 December 1911 Collier's Weekly), an enduring demonstration of the terrors of Biology in early sf – If You Touch Them They Vanish (1913), and The Incandescent Lily and Other Stories (coll 1914), whose title story is a Lost Race tale set in a hidden valley deep in the inner Asian frontiers of China.
The Goddess (1915) – with Charles W Goddard (1879-1951), author of the script for The Perils of Pauline (1914) – novelizes a Morris screenplay, and has been listed as fantastic, but the heavenly woman in a toga who helps folk is a victim of hypnosis. [JC]
see also: Origin of Man.
Gouverneur Morris IV
born New York: 7 February 1876
died Gallup, New Mexico: 14 August 1953
works
- The Pagan's Progress (New York: A S Barnes and Co, 1904) [illus/hb/John Rae]
- The Voice in the Rice (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co, 1910) [hb/J C Leyendecker]
- If You Touch Them They Vanish (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913) [hb/]
- The Goddess (New York: Hearst's International Library Co, 1915) with Charles W Goddard [tie: novelization of Morris screenplay: hb/]
collections
- The Footprint and Other Stories (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908) [coll: hb/]
- It and Other Stories (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912) [coll: hb/]
- The Incandescent Lily and Other Stories (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914) [coll: hb/]
- Back There in the Grass (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2015) with Irvin S Cobb [coll: edited by S T Joshi: pb/Aeron Alfrey]
links
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