R. R. Ryan

[timothymayer]

This just in! Ramble House is reprinting FREAK MUSEUM and THE SUBJUGATED BEAST!
Here's the claim (found on Ramble House's website) that RR Ryan was a woman:

THE RIDDLE OF R.R. RYAN



Well, at long last I’m getting to write the introduction for new edition of Freak Museum, a book that I’ve wanted to publish since I started in this crazy business in 1986 . . . Ever since Karl Edward Wagner wrote up his list of the thirty-nine best horror novels, R.R. Ryan’s books have been an obsession for me. Going on Karl’s description (followed up by Ramsey Campbell’s excellent essay on Ryan’s novels), these books sounded like they would be worth every penny of the small fortune that was being asked for them when one turned up in a catalog. (There’s nothing like singing the praises of a rare book in a widely read column to send collectors into a feeding frenzy and drive the prices up). I don’t know what you might have paid for a Ryan novel before Karl’s column, but any copies that surfaced afterwards were priced in the hundreds. For readers conversant with Karl Edward Wagner’s list of the thirty-nine best horror novels, the name of R.R. Ryan holds a place of special significance. Only Ryan and the brilliant German, Hans Heinz Ewers are represented by three selections . . . In fact, Ryan pulls off the hat trick of being listed in all three categories; best supernatural novel with Echo of a Curse, best non-supernatural novel with The Subjugated Beast and finally, best science fictional horror with Freak Museum. Several other authors, (Nigel Kneale, Walter S. Masterman, Fredric Brown, and John Dickson Carr) are honored with two entries, but Ryan and Ewers are the only ones with three. In all fairness, the list was never intended to be a real “best of”; rather it was a bully pulpit that Karl used to call attention to authors that he felt might well be unknown to modern readers. In that capacity it succeeded wondrously well and not only rekindled an interest in authors such as R.R. Ryan, Mark Hansom and Walter S. Masterman but stimulated scholars and collectors to seek out other authors who might have been overlooked . . . I’ve pretty much made a career of continuing Karl’s work by restoring to print works by dozens of authors who might otherwise be forgotten in our modern world wherein books have a shelf life of only two weeks before they have the covers stripped for credit and the guts of the book tossed in a dumpster.

In 2002 Midnight House brought out a new edition of Echo of a Curse, with an excellent introduction by D.H. Olson that speculated on the identity of the mysterious person behind the Ryan pen-name. Olson agreed with Ramsey Campbell who had earlier surmised that behind the Ryan pen-name hid a female author; basing this hypothesis on the fact that the female characters were exceptionally well-drawn, much moreso than their male counterparts. Since I’m not the sort to throw a couple of my best friends under the bus, I’ll admit here and now that I agreed with this assessment 100%. Later articles by eminent scholars in the field seemed to indicate that we were dead wrong . . .

Some years later a lengthy essay was published by two gentlemen who claimed to have solved the mystery and at last revealed the identity of the mysterious author. This essay postulated that “Ryan” was the popular British stage actor Cameron Carr. Sadly, this is close to the truth but later research indicates that this too was wrong . . . So too was the biblioflub that considered R.R. Ryan to be the same as one Rachel Ryan, who would have been authoring these rather lurid novels in her eighties or nineties . . .

So what do we really know about the author? Well, at long last the identity of R.R. Ryan has been revealed . . . Denice Jeanette Bradley-Ryan, the daughter of Evelyn Bradley, the playwright. It is very likely that Evelyn Bradley had a hand in at least the early novels. By the time of Freak Museum, it’s likely that Ms. Bradley-Ryan was flying solo as she was in the next decade when she turned out four novels under the byline of “Kay Seaton”. The source for this information is none other than the author’s son, whose word is good enough for me.

How then to explain paperwork that would seem to indicate Evelyn Bradley as the author? Quite simply, publishing was a chauvinistic business then and any number of accomplished female authors found it prudent to hide behind a masculine or neutral pseudonym. C.L. Moore, Donald Dale, and many more. The reality was that a male author likely commanded a much better advance and then there’s the subject matter . . . While there was a storied tradition of genteel ghost stories by women such as J.H. Riddell, Mrs. Oliphant, Eleanor Smith, Alice Perrin, D.K. Broster and many, many more the content and tone of the Ryan novels was far closer to the Grand Guignol excesses of the American weird-menace pulps than to the spectres of the traditional ghostly yarn. I think it can safely be assumed that Denice Bradley-Ryan called on her father to help with the writing of some of the earlier novels and most definitely had his help when it came to placing the novels with Herbert Jenkins.

Without a doubt, Echo of a Curse, Freak Museum, and The Subjugated Beast are masterpieces of horror, and in terms of their content and general tone, as far ahead of their time as were the weird menace tales of authors such as Wyatt Blassingame, Donald Dale, and Ralston Shields. Of the other novels, Devil’s Shelter is essentially a less imaginative dry run for Freak Museum, Death of a Sadist is a fair-to-middling melodrama and The Right to Kill an interesting failure. No Escape is simply brilliant, though completely devoid of fantastic elements. The other novels which are credited under the Cameron Carr by-line include Gilded Clay and The Other; these are fine novels but to my view somewhat toned down from the powerful prose of the best Ryan books.

Freak Museum as a novel is kin to the weird menace pulps that were being published in America at the same time. The basic premise of the weird menace genre was to trot out a menacing figure that seemed to be supernatural in nature and then in the last couple of pages provide a rational explanation for the seemingly supernatural events that had occurred up to this point. By use of the mad scientist, Ryan makes the novel qualify as a work of weird menace, though the tone of the novel is quite different from the brooding sense of dread that one would get in a story by Arthur Leo Zagat or Hugh B. Cave. In fact, for most of the first four chapters we might just as well be reading a shop-girl romance, what with our plucky Irish heroine, unmarried, but in a family way (as was the terminology of the times). There is one scene where we see our first freak, a creature sprouting a beast’s head from its chest, but this is quickly passed over and the same cheery tone continues.

Then in the last few pages of Chapter Four we meet the Octopus . . . The Octopus is one of the great villainous characters in all of thriller fiction, in the fashion of the bad guys from Chet Gould’s newspaper strip, Dick Tracy where hideously warped features were a sure indicator of a mind that was every bit as twisted as the exterior. Yes, the Octopus can stand alongside the great villains of the pulps such as A. E. Apple’s Mr. Chang, Dr. Satan’s legless henchman Bostiff, and the numerous malformed and mentally warped characters that paraded through the pages of Dime Mystery Magazine, Horror Stories and Terror Tales. The Octopus is only a henchman, but this grotesque character steals the spotlight in every scene in which he appears.

Other freaks range from the prosaic to the incredibly grotesque, one is not likely to forget encountering “the Stomache”. In terms of plot, Freak Museum is a much more ambitious treatment of the earlier “Devil’s Shelter”, with the grotesque elements ramped up to the nth degree. Were it not for the rather slow opening and the very British tone, the story could easily have been serialized in Dime Mystery right along with similar works by Hugh B. Cave, Arthur Leo Zagat, and Wayne Rogers. The rational explanation of motives and events that moves the book tenuously into the realm of science fiction is as implausible as the sort of endings that were tacked on by weird menace writers like J.O. Quinliven (an entertaining author who frequently wrote himself into a corner and would have to rely on a deux ex machina to set things right.) If there is a weak point to the book it’s that there is so much energy expended on bringing the freaks to life that the detective heroes of the book are by comparison cardboard cutouts.

This is a minor flaw as Ryan seamlessly combines the elements of the weird-menace tale with the espionage novel. Adding the element of espionage is a perfectly logical thing to do in a war-time novel, but I feel that it was unnecessary and that part of the charm of Echo of a Curse is that no attempt is made to provide a rationalization for seemingly supernatural occurrences. One does wonder if Ryan ever attempted the US markets. Of all of the novels, Freak Museum and Devil’s Shelter would seem almost perfect for Rogers Terrill at Popular Publications, save for the fact that editor Terrill detested serials, and during his tenure at Dime Mystery, Terror Tales and Horror Stories he only ran one, the brilliant historical piece, The Curse of the Harcourts by Chandler Whipple (available from Altus Press). So unless truncated versions were offered, there might not have been much of a market in the US. Of course, we have yet to discover whether or not Ryan authored any short fiction of any type. For what it’s worth, there are nearly a dozen authors who show up in the weird menace magazines that I’ve been unable to conclusively identify, so it is quite possible that behind one of these names stands Denice Jeanette Bradley-Ryan. As the author seemed to compartmentalize her work, it’s certainly a good possibility that any short stories would have appeared under a byline reserved for that purpose. Many thriller authors who had established themselves as reliable producers of novels totally eschewed the short story. The great Mark Hansom only wrote one short story that we know of, and another contemporary, Walter S. Masterman authored only a handful of short stories, so it’s quite possible that the author we know as R.R. Ryan was strictly a novelist. If that’s the case, then Denice Jeanette Bradley-Ryan certainly left a remarkable legacy that places her among the masters of the form. While three of her best novels have now been reprinted, it is important to note that all of them are well worth reading and it is our intention to ensure that a new generation of readers has that opportunity. And there are still many, many questions to be answered about this remarkable author . . .

John Pelan

Yuletide 2012

[jamesdoig]

Feb 23, 2013 17:27:35 GMT timothymayer said:

This just in! Ramble House is reprinting FREAK MUSEUM and THE SUBJUGATED BEAST!
Here's the claim (found on Ramble House's website) that RR Ryan was a woman:

That's pretty disappointing. I saw it coming a few months ago and wrote a Wormwoodiana blog here to try and set the record straight: wormwoodiana.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/rr-ryan.html The fact that John completely ignores the book contracts is a pretty bad oversight. Let's face it, if you're trying to identify an author named R.R. Ryan, and a person pops up whose working name is Rex Ryan and whose home address is on all the book contracts, then I'd say there's every chance you've found your man.

I contacted David Medhurst via ancestry years ago when the book contracts led me to Evelyn Bradley/Rex Ryan - he hadn't heard of the R.R. Ryan books and seemed genuinely delighted that his grandfather wrote the books. Later on when I interviewed him he'd become convinced his mum wrote the books, but he had no evidence, and for me the book contracts were a more authoritative source - and they still are, unless new evidence has come to light.

I'm also a bit miffed about the comments John makes about the article Theo and I wrote for All Hallows - for one thing, we never said the actor Cameron Carr wrote the R.R. Ryan, Cameron Carr and John Galton novels, we merely suggested him as a possibility, for another it revealed the existence of the book contracts and that R.R. Ryan wrote novels under other names, which was a first. At that time Random House had refused access to the address on the contracts for privacy reasons, but a few years later they did, and that's when it became clear who R.R. Ryan was. "Gentlemen" indeed!

[dem]

I don't know the ins and outs of it at all, and perhaps Mr. Pelan has more information he's yet to make public, but the Wormwoodania article makes as compelling a case for Rex Ryan as Mr. Pelan does for Denice Jeanette Bradley-Ryan ("I'll take her son's word for it"). If he arrived at Mr Medhurst under his own steam and completely independent of your research, fair enough. But If he's taken his lead from your joint All Hallows article, then, yeah, to be dismissed out of hand like that, I reckon I'd be pretty "miffed" too.

[cauldronbrewer]

Feb 23, 2013 21:55:37 GMT dem said:

I don't know the ins and outs of it at all, and perhaps Mr. Pelan has more information he's yet to make public, but the Wormwoodania article makes as compelling a case for Rex Ryan as Mr. Pelan does for Denice Jeanette Bradley-Ryan ("I'll take her son's word for it"). If he arrived at Mr Medhurst under his own steam and completely independent of your research, fair enough. But If he's taken his lead from your joint All Hallows article, then, yeah, to be dismissed out of hand like that, I reckon I'd be pretty "miffed" too.

I recently purchased the Ramble House edition of The Subjugated Beast (haven't read it yet) and plan to buy their edition of Freak Museum, but I agree with Dem here. Maybe I'm used to academic standards and am applying them unfairly to a book introduction (and perhaps it's not my place to say it), but it seems tacky to not cite James by name.

[Deleted]

Mar 21, 2013 21:50:08 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

Feb 23, 2013 21:55:37 GMT dem said:

I don't know the ins and outs of it at all, and perhaps Mr. Pelan has more information he's yet to make public, but the Wormwoodania article makes as compelling a case for Rex Ryan as Mr. Pelan does for Denice Jeanette Bradley-Ryan ("I'll take her son's word for it"). If he arrived at Mr Medhurst under his own steam and completely independent of your research, fair enough. But If he's taken his lead from your joint All Hallows article, then, yeah, to be dismissed out of hand like that, I reckon I'd be pretty "miffed" too.

I recently purchased the Ramble House edition of The Subjugated Beast (haven't read it yet) and plan to buy their edition of Freak Museum, but I agree with Dem here. Maybe I'm used to academic standards and am applying them unfairly to a book introduction (and perhaps it's not my place to say it), but it seems tacky to not cite James by name.

I'm taking a little mission in the next few months for James to go and so some detective work when it comes to the mysterious R.R. Ryan...

[timothymayer]

Just did a review of the Ramble House edition of The Subjugated Beast:
www.z7hq.com/pulp/the-subjugated-beast-by-r-r-ryan-ramble-house.php

[timothymayer]

And here is my review of FREAK MUSEUM:

www.z7hq.com/pulp/freak-museum-by-r-r-ryan.php

[doug]

Apr 7, 2013 14:37:16 GMT timothymayer said:

And here is my review of FREAK MUSEUM:

www.z7hq.com/pulp/freak-museum-by-r-r-ryan.php

Excellent review! I was just looking at this at Amazon the other day. I think I'll pass it over for the time being.

Doug

[cauldronbrewer]

I still plan on buying Freak Museum in the near future--I liked Echo of a Curse and The Subjugated Beast (which I finished a few days ago) enough to give it a try. Between those two, I can't decide which I prefer. On the one hand, Echo has a more extensive and better developed supernatural angle. On the other, Beast has a more interesting protagonist and benefits from the first person narration.

[jamesdoig]

Apr 7, 2013 14:37:16 GMT timothymayer said:

And here is my review of FREAK MUSEUM:

Nice review, Tim. It strikes me that this is the Ryan book that reads most like the weird menace pulps that were being churned it in the US in magazines like Terror Tales - they tended to mix genres like crime and spy stories and horror, just as Freak Museum does. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Ryan read Arthur Leo Zagat in the pulps, eg 'House of Living Death.'

I still can't see why anyone would think Rex Ryan didn't write it. Rex Ryan was the name he always used - he's even in the electoral rolls as Rex Ryan. So when he uses the name R.R. Ryan, he isn't coming up with a pen name or pseudonym to disguise more than one author, he's using his own name and he wants himself to be seen as the author of the books.

[cauldronbrewer]

OK, so Freak Museum doesn't sink to the sublime depths of The Subjugated Beast or Echo of a Curse. It spends too much time on its likable but boring leads, its ill-defined villains, and its ill-fated cops; it doesn't spend enough time on the likes of the Human Octopus, and it doesn't answer many of the questions that it raises (for example, what really happened to the baby?). Still, I'd say it's worth a read for anyone who likes the weird menace genre.

[jamesdoig]

May 13, 2013 1:46:59 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

Still, I'd say it's worth a read for anyone who likes the weird menace genre.

That's a good assessment - you don't get the bizarre abnormal psychological portraits you do in the others.

[jamesdoig]

May 13, 2013 1:46:59 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

OK, so Freak Museum doesn't sink to the sublime depths of The Subjugated Beast or Echo of a Curse.

I've posted some more Rex Ryan info on the Wormwoodiana blog, some interesting stuff about his life as a repertory actor: wormwoodiana.blogspot.com.au/

[cemetery]

I just ordered my copy of the "subjugated beast" reprint and I'm thrilled.

[amp]

I apologise for a rambling first post and if some of this is all a bit vague but I’ve been lurking with the intention of posting more about Ryan when I can recover my books and notes from storage but prompted by James Doig’s recent findings I thought I’d post what I can recall:

I can confirm that there are almost certainly at least two other Ryan novels published in the early 30s by the Anglo-Eastern Publishing company; actually probably re-published but more anon..

The Australian connection James mentions in his Wormwoodiana post is probably in the person of the publisher behind the Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co., William Nicholas Willis. I do own a copy of ‘The Tyranny of Virtue’ published by a Nicholas F Willis from (I believe) Waterloo Road in 1925. Anglo-Eastern under W. N. Willis also published from Waterloo Road (although from a different building) but the connection is stronger than that. As we know in common with a number of publishers issuing material from the margins of respectability, a number of titles didn’t make it to the important libraries and some of these Anglo-Eastern grey titles I have managed to add to my collection.

In one of these (whose title and story escapes me but it’s pretty much a variant on the archetypal ‘doomed woman’ theme beloved of the Anglo-Eastern material) there is a full catalogue of available titles which includes “Tyranny of Virtue” by Noel Despard with no suggestion that it is a re-issue which it certainly is as we are in the post-reformation era of Anglo-Eastern… post-1932 I believe. However the catalogue also lists two further titles under the more familiar pseudonym ‘Rex Ryan’. Now one of these I do remember is called ‘Midnight Love’ but for the love of me I can’t remember the other. It seems reasonable to assume that these missing titles didn’t suddenly appear en masse in Willis’ 1932 catalogue without appearing in some form in the intervening years. This is all conjecture but I would hazard that they originally appeared under the N F Willis imprint but the relationship between N. F. and W. N. escapes me, I think I have notes for this somewhere but it’s slipped my mind for the moment.

Incidentally “Tyranny of Virtue” has really very much the flavour of Anglo-Eastern fair and bears little resemblance to what little of the more mature Ryan material I’ve read. It reads far more like a missing Bree Narran title; this author was a staple of Anglo-Eastern and the pseudonym believed to be the imprint of Willis’ son but…you know…just maybe.

In the same vein there is also another little known writer in the Anglo-Eastern stable ‘Herbert Parker’, whose sole literary legacy seems to be two novels; the very similarly titled ‘The Midnight Lady’ (1922) (which I do own - a strange immoral novel about hotel bandits and confidence tricksters. The heroine’s utter neglect of the main character’s health leads to his demise and goes not only unpunished but she is actually rewarded for her non-intervention) and ‘The Cuckoo Lady: A Powerful Novel’, presumably more of the same…

Andrew