Harry Irving Shumway

Harry Irving Shumway worked across illustration, editing, poetry, biography and fiction. A contemporary Who’s Who in Massachusetts places his birth in Naugatuck, Connecticut, in 1883, records study at the Art Students’ League and Harvard’s 47 Workshop, and lists editorial work at House Beautiful and Youth’s Companion. The same entry names books including The Story of Paper and Lawrence, the Arabian Knight. A later specialist bibliography traces his magazine stories across American Boy, Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post and other periodicals.

Shumway’s only documented contribution to Weird Tales is “Golden Glow,” printed in the April 1923 issue. The magazine called it a haunted-house story with a touch of humor. Its plot begins when two motorists stop beside an abandoned cottage, drawn by the flowers outside it. That fiction credit belongs to a much broader writing career, but the surviving sources do not make Weird Tales the center of his work. Shumway died in New Hampshire in 1974. The contrast between the single pulp story and his many books and magazine assignments helps place the byline in proportion.