Verner, Gerald
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Best-known pseudonym of UK author John Robert Stuart Pringle (1897-1980), who also wrote as by Donald Stuart, under which name he wrote forty-four Sexton Blake tales beginning in 1927, and as by Thane Leslie; along with these primary pseudonyms, he apparently also wrote as by Derwent Steele and Nigel Vane. The Vampire Men (1941) is a Vampire thriller. Most of Verner's work consisted of crime thrillers, though some fantastic content is discernible in some titles, including the occasional advanced Weapon or other Technology. An example is Yu-Malu, The Dragon Princess (1967 as by Thane Leslie; vt The Dragon Princess: A Novel of Adventure 2011 as Verner), whose titular female Fu-Manchu figure (see Yellow Peril) is determined to obtain the McGuffin of a new Rocket-fuel formula and blackmails the West with the threat of a device that reduces gold reserves to valueless dust (see Transmutation). [JC/DRL]
John Robert Stuart Pringle
born London: 31 January 1897
died Broadstairs, Kent: 16 September 1980
works (highly selected)
- The Vampire Men (London: Wright and Brown, 1941) [hb/]
- Yu-Malu, The Dragon Princess (London: Wright and Brown, 1967) as by Thane Leslie [hb/]
- The Dragon Princess: A Novel of Adventure (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press/Borgo Press, 2011) as by Gerald Verner [vt of the above: pb/]
works as editor
- "Come Not, Lucifer!": A Romantic Anthology (London: John Westhouse, 1945) anonymous [anth: illus/R A Brandt: hb/nonpictorial]
- Prince of Darkness: Witchcraft, Satanism, Sorcery, Lycanthropy (London: John Westhouse, 1946) anonymous [anth: hb/from James Callot, "The Temptation of St Anthony"]
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