Shepherd, Wilson

   (b. 1917)

   Weird fiction editor and publisher in Oakman, Alabama, and associate of HPL (1932–37). HPL first heard of Shepherd indirectly from R.H.Barlow, who protested that Shepherd was trying to bamboozle him in regard to the exchange of some pulp magazines. HPL’s (unintentionally comical) piece, “Correspondence between R.H.Barlow and Wilson Shepherd” (1932; first published in LS No. 13 [Fall 1986]: 68–71), attempts to unsnarl the misunderstanding. In 1936 HPL heard directly from Shepherd, who was now assisting Donald A.Wollheim in editing the Phantagraph . The two editors also conceived of a semi-professional magazine, Fanciful Tales,which was issued in Fall 1936 and contained a severely misprinted version of HPL’s “The Nameless City.” Shepherd was also attempting to write poetry. HPL slightly touched up an apparently unpublished poem called “Death” (see HPL to Shepherd, August 11, 1936; ms., JHL) and more exhaustively revised a poem called “Wanderer’s Return” (see HPL to Shepherd, September 5, 1936), published in the Literary Quarterly(Winter 1937). In acknowledgment, Wollheim and Shepherd printed HPL’s sonnet “Background” ( Fungi from Yuggoth 30) as a broadside for his forty-sixth birthday (it purports to be Volume 47, No. 1 of The Lovecrafter). After HPL’s death Shepherd printed A History of the Necronomicon under the imprint of the Rebel Press (1938).