Walworth, Mansfield Tracy
Entry updated 7 October 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1830-1873) US author, almost certainly best known for the circumstances of his marriage and death: he married his stepsister Ellen Hardin Walworth (1832-1915) and abused her until she left him, after which their son Frank murdered him. It seems clearly the case that contortions of fustian, and almost random-seeming allusions to evocative subjects like Atlantis, have made his fiction difficult to parse meaningfully. But a tale like Warwick; Or, the Lost Nationalities of America (1869), the eponym being a horse, does tentatively enter Lost World territory, with gold being discovered in an unknown fastness deep Underground within Mammoth Cave, Kentucky; and a sense pervades the tale that something autochthonous is haunting upstate New York. Also of sf interest are two Lost Race tales: Delaplaine; Or, the Sacrifice of Irene (1871), in which a convict innocent of any crime escapes (see Crime and Punishment), finds treasure in Africa, and returns to exonerate himself; and Zahara; Or, a Leap for Empire (1888), which is likewise set in Africa. [JC]
Mansfield Tracy Walworth
born Albany, New York: 3 December 1830
died New York: 3 June 1873
works (highly selected)
- Warwick; Or, the Lost Nationalities of America (New York: G W Carleton, Publisher, 1869) [hb/]
- Delaplaine; Or, the Sacrifice of Irene (New York: G W Carleton and Company, 1871) [hb/]
- Zahara; Or, a Leap for Empire (New York: G W Dillingham, 1888) [hb/]
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