author
Harold Hersey
1893–1956
A lively force in the early pulp era, this editor, publisher, poet, and storyteller helped shape the fast-moving magazine world that fed generations of adventure and fantasy readers. His memoir Pulpwood Editor offers a firsthand look at that rough-and-ready publishing scene.
1 Audiobook
The Book of Gud
by Milo Hastings, Harold Hersey
About the author
Born in Montana in 1893, Harold Brainerd Hersey built a career across several corners of popular publishing. He worked as an editor, publisher, short-story writer, and poet, and became especially associated with the booming pulp-magazine world of the early twentieth century.
Hersey edited and launched a range of magazines during the years when pulp fiction was still defining itself. He is often remembered for his connection to early fantasy and science-fiction pulps, including Thrill Book, and for his wider work in crime, adventure, and general fiction magazines. That mix of editorial hustle and entrepreneurial energy made him one of the busy behind-the-scenes figures of the pulp age.
He also wrote poetry and later published Pulpwood Editor in 1937, a nonfiction account of the magazine business from someone who had lived inside it. He died in 1956, but his name still turns up in histories of pulp fiction because he witnessed—and helped build—one of the most colorful periods in American popular reading.