Winchester, Clarence
Entry updated 6 April 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1895-1981) UK editor, journalist, poet and author, several of whose edited volumes, mostly about the world of the air, have remained known, including in particular Wonders of World Aviation (15 March-December 1938 Amalgamated Press in 40 parts; 1938 2vols) where, for almost the last time before World War Two ended that dream, it could be assumed that a worldwide Pax Aeronautica was just around the corner, and the set's almost total absence of warplanes could be understood as normative. His adventure fiction, which was nonfantastic, tended to include aeroplanes. The World Film Encyclopedia: A Universal Screen Guide (anth 1933), though compendious, shows some of the limits of its era: there is an entry on Fritz Lang, for instance, but not on Georges Méliès.
Winchester's Three Modern Musketeers sequence of antiquated espionage thrillers in the mould of Dennis Wheatley, beginning with Three Men in a Plane (1941), are not listed below. He is of some sf interest for the long title poem of Earthquake in Los Angeles and Other Poems (coll 1938 chap), which depicts a Near Future Disaster in California. [JC]
Clarence Arthur Charles Winchester
born London: 17 March 1895
died Haywards Heath, West Sussex: 15 March 1981
works (highly selected)
- Earthquake in Los Angeles and Other Poems (London: Cassell and Company, 1938) [poetry: chap: hb/]
nonfiction works as editor
- The World Film Encyclopedia: A Universal Screen Guide (London: The Amalgamated Press, 1933) [anth: hb/]
- Wonders of World Aviation (London: The Amalgamated Press, 1938) [published in two volumes: first appeared in 30 parts: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry