Edward Lucas White (May 11, 1866 – March 30, 1934) was an American author and poet.

Life

Born in Bergen County, New Jersey, the son of Thomas Hurley White (1838-1902) and Kate Butler (Lucas) White, he attended

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, where he lived for the rest of his life. From 1915 until his retirement in 1930 he was a teacher at the University School for Boys in Baltimore. He published a number of

historical novels Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ...

, including ''El Supremo: A Romance of the Great Dictator of Paraguay'' (1916),''The Unwilling Vestal'' (1918), ''Andivius Hedulio'' (1921) and ''Helen'' (1926), but he is best remembered for

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

horror stories such as "The House of the Nightmare" and "Lukundoo" that were based on his own nightmares. Two collections of his short fiction were published in his lifetime, ''The Song of the Sirens'' (1919) and ''Lukundoo and Other Stories'' (1927). "Lukundoo", White's most frequently anthologized story, is the tale of an American explorer in a remote section of Africa who incurs the wrath of the local

witch doctor A witch doctor (also spelled witch-doctor) was originally a type of healer who treated ailments believed to be caused by witchcraft. The term is now more commonly used to refer to healers, particularly in regions which use traditional healing ...

, who casts a spell on him. Hundreds of sore pustules erupt all over the explorer's body. As these develop, it becomes clear that each sore is actually a sort of

homunculus A homunculus ( , , ; "little person") is a representation of a small human being, originally depicted as small statues made out of clay. Popularized in sixteenth-century alchemy and nineteenth-century fiction, it has historically referred to the ...

: a tiny African man, emerging head-first from within the explorer's flesh. He is able to terminate the development of individual homunculi by beheading them as they develop, but there are too many for him to defeat them all – and some of them are on portions of his back which he cannot reach. The explorer's only option is suicide. As his extensive "selected bibliography on the history of Paraguay during the days of 'El Supremo,' Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia" and brief Preface point out, White took great pains to make his historical novel ''El Supremo'' quite realistic and historically accurate. As he writes in the Preface: "The minor characters are mostly also historical. Only Hawthorne, Cecelia and Beltran, the Mayorgas and the Velardes are fictitious." He then goes on to list by name about two dozen characters who "are as authentic as their names" along with another two dozen or so where he admits "The first names of these characters, however, it has been found advisable to alter", mainly because there were just too many "christened Juan or Jose", but "in a romance any one would become hopelessly confused." He admits to changing the English Dr. Parlett's name to Tom for effect and gave names to two characters whose names have been lost in the histories: El Pelado's and El Zapo's. Two posthumous collections of his fiction have been published by Midnight House: ''The House of the Nightmare'' (12547ac) edited by John Pelan and ''Sesta and Other Strange Stories'' (2001) edited by Lee Weinstein. The latter contains mostly previously unpublished and uncollected material. During 1885 White began a

utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island societ ...

n science fiction novel, ''Plus Ultra''. He destroyed the first draft and started over in 1901, then worked on it for most of the rest of his life. The resulting monumental work—estimated by one critic at 500,000 words—remains unpublished, although a portion of it was released separately in 1920 as the novella ''From Behind the Stars''. On March 30, 1934, seven years to the day after the death of his wife, Agnes Gerry, he committed suicide by gas inhalation in the bathroom of his Baltimore home.''Edwardian Review''
/ref> His last book, ''Matrimony'' (1932) was a memoir of his happy marriage to her.

Bibliography

Novels

*''El Supremo: A Romance of the Great Dictator of Paraguay'' (1916), copyright renewed by Ethyl White in 1944 and republished, with an introduction by Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., 1967 (E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.) *''The Unwilling Vestal: A Tale of Rome Under the Caesars'' (1918) *''Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire'' (1921) *''Helen'' (1926)

Short story collections

*''The Song of the Sirens'' (1919) ** "The Song of the Sirens", "Iarbas", "The Right Man", "Dodona", "The Elephant's Ear", "The Fasces", "The Swimmers", "The Skewbald Panther", "Disvola", "The Flambeau Bracket". *'' Lukundoo and Other Stories'' (1927) ** "Lukundoo", "Floki's Blade", "The Picture Puzzle", "The Snout", "Alfandega 49a", "The Message on the Slate", "Amina", "The Pig-Skin Belt", "The House of the Nightmare", "Sorcery Island".

History

*''Why Rome Fell'' (1927)

Autobiography

*''Matrimony'' (1932)

Notes

External links

*
Edward Lucas White Papers at Milton S. Eisenhower Library
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:White, Edward Lucas 1866 births 1934 suicides 20th-century American novelists American horror writers American male novelists American historians American historical novelists 20th-century American poets American male poets American male short story writers 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers Weird fiction writers 1934 deaths