R. R. Ryan

[jamesdoig]

Jun 17, 2013 19:36:09 GMT amp said:

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

Wow, Andrew - fantastic stuff!

I've been heading in the William Nicholas Willis direction too, on the basis of the similarity of name and publisher's address. Here are the title page for Droll Stories and Tyranny of Virtue:





And here is an advert for Bree Narran's The Love Child, which shows some themes in common with Ryan books:



While I had been looking at Herbert Parker and Wentworth Oliver as possible Rex Ryan pseudonyms, it certainly sounds like you've cracked it with references to books written under his own name.

William Nicholas Willis sn sounds like a fascinating man in his own right - and he was on the stage for a time in Australia (According to the Australian DNB), which might explain his links to Rex Ryan.

I for one am looking forward to more of your research.

[amp]

Thanks James.Ah so it was Waterloo Bridge Road and both at 50. Cecil Court was Anglo-Eastern’s (later?) address but I don’t think anyone’s successfully mapped these companies and their permutations.

I’m sure you know the Willis name was associated with the Camden Publishing Co. but I think its beginnings post-date Willis Snr’s involvement. It certainly reissued the Narrans and some of Willis’ non-fiction but not, as far as I know the Ryan titles and some of the other obscurities; it was probably more of a’ better-sellers’ house. What’s confusing is that Anglo-Eastern and Camden would seem to alternately co-exist, disappear and re-emerge in various incarnations. Anglo-Eastern and N F Willis were also publishing concurrently but Willis was also releasing his own books via Stanley Paul and others in the earlier days. There was also some cross-over titles in later years with some of the early Gerald Swan output but I don’t suppose there was any real connection there.

I have the Wentworth Oliver book. I think the perception is the novel can be attributed to W. N. Willis himself but what grounds exist for making that assumption I don't know, I’ve not got round to reading it. There's also a school of thought that Willis Snr’s behind the Narran titles but again it's all conjecture. As you’ll know it's tricky as most of the Anglo-Eastern stuff is rare as so somewhat difficult to assess..I've only cobbled together about three or four Narrans (The Dancing Girl, The Kinema Girl, Woman of Forty..) and a bunch of the more obscure Willis books, including the wonderfully titled ‘White Slaves in a Piccadilly Flat’ which is actually a pulpy true crime book, and almost all of these copies came from the same source. In terms of the novels plot-wise they’re much of a sameness and very reminiscent of Tyranny but the fallen woman in peril was nothing new and a staple of the kind of melodrama Ryan endorsed.
Back to Ryan, I feel sure I found reference to his father/grandfather(?) either committing fraud or some such similar heinous act and being drummed out of town in the later 1800s. I think I know where I have the notes for this so I’ll rout them out.

Incidentally I collect old postcards of low rent bad girl melodramas and have several postcards of the Denville players; no idea if Ryan is on them as I can’t recall whether I found evidence he did actually travel with them or whether the connection is solely that they toured ‘Stone The Woman’ but one is for a production called ‘The Strangler’ signed by…arrrghhh - again the name is gone for the moment…but he was in the production of “Stone The Woman” anyway.

[jamesdoig]

Jun 17, 2013 23:13:12 GMT amp said:

Thanks James.Ah so it was Waterloo Bridge Road and both at 50. Cecil Court was Anglo-Eastern’s (later?) address but I don’t think anyone’s successfully mapped these companies and their permutations.

The only person I know of with any interest in the Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co is Prof John Arnold at Monash. You've probably seen this which has a section on Anglo-Eastern and WNW: books.publishing.monash.edu/apps/bookworm/view/Australians+in+Britain%3A+The+Twentieth-Century+Experience/137/xhtml/chapter10.html

I got in touch with him about Rex Ryan, but he couldn't shed any light on him, though he did say that Wentworth Oliver and Herbert Parker were possibilities - certainly he hadn't heard of any books published under the Rex Ryan name. I'm reading Wentworth Oliver's Defiance at the moment, but it seems clearly W.N. Willis to me - the sprinkling of French quotes is a dead give away - not a bad book though. As you say, Tyranny of Virtue has a lot in common with his books.

John Arnold mentions a catalogue of Anglo-Easterm titles - I'll ask him if he can check it for Rex Ryan books. It's dated 1933, so quite late, and might not have the Rex Ryan titles, which must have been published before Tyranny of Virtue in 1925. That said, you've dated them to the early 1930s - presumably reprints, so thay could be in the catalogue.

John also reckons it's pretty clear that WNW Sn was Bree Narran, not his son of the same name (the writer of the Australian DNB got it wrong) - though a lot of books were written under that name in a very short time, so who knows if the psuedonym disguises more than one author?

As for using the name Nicholas F. Willis - Anglo-Eastern did sail pretty close to the wind - they were done for obscenity in 1920 for a 'free' translation of Du Maupassant's Une Vie, so WNW junior may have been trying to disguise himself if he thought Tyranny of Virtue was in the sights of the moral police. But who knows? The mid-' 20s seem to have been a transition period between the death of WNW senior, and the early 30s when his son became much more active.

Do see if you can dig up the info about his grandfather (or father?) - I know Rex Ryan surviving relatives are interested in anything relating to him.

[amp]

James the Anglo-Eastern catalogue including both ‘Tyranny’ and the Rex Ryan titles was definitely post 1930; 1932 I think. It was bound into the novel whose title escapes me although it has now come back to me that it is written by a ‘Willis’ with just an initial. Certainly it wasn’t ‘W’…I’m thinking ‘B’ but fully expect to be proved wrong. I say bound in because the catalogue section is printed onto a completely different standard of paper and runs to about 20 or so pages at the back; bound in at the production stage not a later addition. The book itself is quite slim and is entirely set in a village in the north of England and other than the fact that it was a slog to finish I can’t remember any plot details…pretty turgid stuff.

I’ve found some of my notes about Ryan so here goes, apologies if it duplicates what is generally known. I have his birth registered in Lancashire in 1883 and baptism on the 19th December of that year at the Church of St. Bede, Toxteth, Liverpool. Both his sister Alison Nora Bradley and brother Arnold Grosvenor Bradley were also baptised on this day as the children of Walter Arnold [Grosvenor] Bradley and Alison Vickers [Greenwood] of 10 Brompton Avenue. The couple had married at Edge Hill, a district of Liverpool on 17 July 1877 and Evelyn’s paternal grandfather was stated to be a James Gibson Bradley, manufacturer and watch merchant.

To be a bit more than charitable, Walter was a bit of a rogue. In the 1870s he seems to have been speculating in a Welsh mining company, ‘The Derwen Deg Pannol-Gwyn Copper and Lead Mining Company’, but the year before Evelyn was born saw Bradley Snr. evading a judgement against him instigated by the liquidator of the ‘Whitchurch and Ellesmere Banking Company’.

By early 1890 with a young family to support he was patenting “a new or improved game of chance and skill” and this seems to have been the first foundations of his ‘[Patent] Novelties Company Ltd’ venture which ultimately brought judgement home to him. In the ten years of its existence the Novelties Company produced nothing more novel than painted wooden and rubber balls made according to a pattern of Bradley’s devising. He was also by his own reckoning a mineowner and further sponsor of the ‘Belgian Manufacturing Company’ with an interest in a unique brush design; this time not of his own devising. The latter enterprise was accused of trading not at all. Certain rights and privileges were assigned and reassigned from one concern to the other and investments made in a further scheme, the Royd Oils Company, stated by one disgruntled shareholder rather bizarrely to be “a strange society”. In 1902 the whole sorry affair ended in a marathon 19 day trial at Manchester Assizes with Bradley ultimately sentenced to 18 months hard labour on charges of conspiracy to defraud the public by publishing false reports and accounts. Bradley so manipulated the companies which he formed that he netted about £50 000 from investors. All these businesses were almost entirely bogus with monies paid directly into Bradley’s private account.

To give a sense of the backdrop to Ryan’s childhood here's a character ‘sketch’ of his father from the trial reports..an evocative piece dripping in melodrama and thinly veiled allusions:

THE NOUVEAU RICHE OF RIPPONDEN

We do not know why the loss of a princely and pious benefactor is not bewailed at Ripponden; for Mr Walter Arnold Bradley last week sold up his establishment and does not contemplate residing there again. They have known him for five years, have found him open handed beyond all experience, have admired the usage of family prayers in a 20 room villa, the softness of disposition in a man who drove a pair of match bays and chartered saloon carriages, and have elected him people’s warden. Mr Bradley was as liberal as Monte Cristo. He came from nobody knew where to the little place five years ago, took Ryburn House and furnished it palatially. Mr Bradley lived from the first in the public eye; constituted himself, indeed a sort of Ripponden windfall.

There was just a spice of ostentation in it, for he made it a point of etiquette that letters should not be addressed to Mr. W. A. Bradley, but to W. A. Grosvenor Bradley. The name ‘Grosvenor’ was one in which he took a certain family pride, it seemed; he had acquired it by some remote but honourable connection with a well-known aristocratic family. Otherwise Mr Bradley’s manners were exemplary. He gave to troublesome people on several occasions the soft answer which turneth away wrath and envious dis-esteem. He was a regular worshipper at Ripponden Church, a generous donor to its funds, and a warm admirer of Evangelical doctrine and methods. It appeared that his costly taste in matters appertaining to domestic art had not perverted a sturdy Prostestantism; he had not, and never could have, the least sort of sympathy with ecclesiastical high ritual. The family prayers at Ryburn edified a large establishment, including a coachman, a groom, gardeners, and a liberal complement of female servants. It was reported that he led their devotions with unusual fervour. He wished his coachman and groom to be at liberty of Sundays to attend a place of worship, and gave a rest to his pair of bays.

That he should not escape calumny was inevitable. Village gossip made much of the fact that his servants never stayed long. There were quarters in which opinion presently went against him, and where it was conjectured shrewdly that Mr Bradley was either a pawnbroker or a moneylender. But all these detractors could learn about the source of his apparently boundless wealth was that he did business in Manchester.

“Light come, light go,” was a proverb quoted against him with headshakings; for he tipped the railway porters handsomely; tipped any man who did him a service and would take his money; tipped the disaffected servants most of all – with an occasional bonus of a sovereign added to their monthly wages, or of half-a-sovereign added to their monthly vails. His visitors themselves were royally entertained. It was for their comfort and exclusiveness, not his own, that he sometimes ran a saloon carriage. He made no close inquiry as to the merits of “deserving objects,” but was to everyone alike a cheerful giver. Is it, or is it not, creditable to the charity and common-sense of Ripponden that, by way of augmenting the mystery of a liberal man’s resourcefulness, a story went the rounds that he had ONE SECRET ROOM at Ryburn, which none but he was allowed to enter, and that, if the contents and what he did there could be known, the whole truth about Mr Grosvenor Bradley would be manifest? Gossip named the room Bluebeard’s Chamber. It seems to have been a writing room – simply furnished with a desk, a couch, a nest of pigeon-holes, a few bentwood chairs, and a screen to ward the draughts off. But Mr Bradley’s reticence was taken as a challenge. In a Yorkshire village reticence is a mistake. There were bets about him in the public-houses, and more than once he was followed to Manchester. The mystery remained a mystery, nevertheless, until the other day. For some time past Mr Bradley had reduced his expenditure without abating it. He kept fewer servants. He was not as often seen at church either; and business at Manchester engaged him rather more closely. Finally, like a bombshell, came the announcement: “Mr Thomas Arnold, instructed by a gentleman who is leaving the neighbourhood, will sell by auction the very handsome and costly appointments” at Ryburn.

Mr Bradley’s attention to business now engages the help of a solicitor, and gives him, doubtless, a certain new anxiety.

…

[amp]

Thanks for the link by the way..so I was well off with the Camden dates. The catalogue that's mentioned should show the Rex Ryan titles if it's the full list. 1933 sounds about right. If Ryan actually knew Willis, I'd be surprised if he didn't see a lot of his father in him.

One more titbit. Ryan's brother Arnold was submitting problems to the Manchester Evening News 'Chess Column' on a fairly regular basis throughout 1901. The disappearance of his submissions would seem to correspond with the beginnings of proceedings against his father.

[jamesdoig]

Jun 18, 2013 19:59:38 GMT amp said:

One more titbit. Ryan's brother Arnold was submitting problems to the Manchester Evening News 'Chess Column' on a fairly regular basis throughout 1901. The disappearance of his submissions would seem to correspond with the beginnings of proceedings against his father.

That might mark his move to Dublin where he joined the chess club: rexryan.org/

The info you've found on Rex Ryan father is extraordinary stuff. In the 1891 census he's described as a "retired African merchant," so he seems to have tried his hand at various ventures.

I want one of those painted wooden balls, by the way

[amp]

I'll sell you one James it's just drying in the shed!!!.

I don't know if it's worth me clogging up the forum with additional genealogical material, especially if it's only speculatory so I've emailed you a couple more snippets and another potential Australian lead to pursue...

[amp]

This is somewhat provisional but I have it in mind that the second Rex Ryan title is either "A Crooked Love" or "Crooked Love"...it's been bugging me all day and unless it's one of the 'missing' Ronald S L Harding titles and I'm misremembering [edit: I've just checked - it isn't Harding] I think that's the one.

[jamesdoig]

Andrew, looks like you're dead right about Rex Ryan books being advertised in Anglo-Eastern/Camden catalogues. A package from Prof Arnold is winging its way to me, and it seems there is at least one RR title mentioned in his working bibliography of the Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co.

[jamesdoig]

Jul 29, 2013 6:37:32 GMT jamesdoig said:

it seems there is at least one RR title mentioned in his working bibliography of the Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co.

And it's Rex Ryan, Midnight Love (Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co), and was advertised in a 1933 edition of Crisp Stories (a volume of translations of French short stories by 'Bree Narran'). So it looks like R.R. Ryan was writing novels before he hooked up with Herbert Jenkins.

[simonhecubus]

Hello All,

I saw this thread and wanted to pop in with some news:
1.  Rex Ryan was NOT the author of the quirky pulp era horror books.  It was actually a female, Denice Jeanette BradleyRyan, writing under a male-seeming pseudonym for obvious reasons.

2.  Here best books may be found under by Dancing Tuatara Press and Ramble House for $18 to $20 US, plus S&H.


Best Regards,

Scott 

[jamesdoig]

Dec 28, 2013 22:56:46 GMT simonhecubus said:

1.  Rex Ryan was NOT the author of the quirky pulp era horror books.  It was actually a female, Denice Jeanette BradleyRyan, writing under a male-seeming pseudonym for obvious reasons.

No, that ascription is wrong. R.R. Ryan was certainly Rex Ryan - the evidence is overwhelming, ie the fact that Rex Ryan used his own name, the fact that Ryan's name and address is on the book contracts, the fact that an article on Denise Bradley-Ryan published in the late 1940s only mentions the Kay Seaton books, the fact that the novels are full of theatre references and Rex Ryan was an actor and playwright as well as novelist, and much else beside. John Pelan emailed a few months ago that his thinking now was that the R.R. Ryan books were co-written by Rex Ryan and Denise Bradley-Ryan, but really there's no evidence that anyone other than Rex Ryan wrote the books. And of course there is nothing "male-seeming" about byline R.R. Ryan, and she had no problems about using a female pseudonym when she wrote her own books in the 1940s...

[simonhecubus]

Interesting that Pelan is now backtracking after seeming so sure he'd determined the truth.  I guess the testimony of Denise's son is no longer considered 'proof' in his mind.  But what about the characterizations (female vs. male)?  He certainly wasn't the first to take this path on his analysis of the situation.

RR Ryan as a pseudonym may not be 'obviously' male, but it's certainly ambiguous enough for a female to use to disguise the fact that a woman wrote these disturbing books.

As far as publishing records as proof, then the case seems stronger for her father being the author than Rex Ryan.  As a playwright, he too would have an authentic voice as far as the behind-the-scenes workings of the stage.  But then, so might a daughter raised around this environment... 

[jamesdoig]

The important thing is to make a judgement based on the available evidence, but John doesn't do this - in fact he doesn't look at the evidence at all. I interviewed David Medhurst, Denise Bradley-Ryan's son, years ago for the small press mag All Hallows (which folded before it could appear) - he didn't convince me because he couldn't provide any actual evidence that she wrote the R.R. Ryan books. Surely something would have survived in her papers. On the other hand, we know that Rex Ryan's papers where destroyed by his wife after his death in 1950. Fortunately, the actual book contracts and some letters survive in the Herbert Jenkins contract registers which are now in the Random House archive.

[amenard]

Evelyn's Daughter only published 4 novels and they were all under the pseudonym, Kay Seaton. The RR Ryan books were all written by Evelyn G. Bradley. I know this to be true because Denice has stated that she published 4 novels. If she collaborated on additional works with her father that were published, she would have said so.