author
S. H. Kemper
A little-known early 20th-century magazine writer, remembered today for short fiction that appeared in major American periodicals. The surviving record is sparse, which gives the work an air of discovery for modern listeners.
1 Audiobook
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series
by Mary Antin, Elizabeth Ashe, Kathleen Carman, Cornelia A. P. (Cornelia Atwood Pratt) Comer, Mazo De la Roche, Annie Hamilton Donnell, James Edmund Dunning, Rebecca Hooper Eastman, William Addleman Ganoe, Lucy Huffaker, Joseph Husband, S. H. Kemper, Christina Krysto, Ellen Mackubin, Edith Ronald Mirrielees, Margaret Prescott Montague, Edward Morlae, Meredith Nicholson, Kathleen Thompson Norris, Laura Spencer Portor, Lucy Pratt, Elsie Singmaster, Charles Haskins Townsend, Edith Wyatt
About the author
S. H. Kemper appears to have been a short-story writer whose work was published in The Atlantic and Harper’s Magazine in the 1910s and 1920s. The strongest confirmed trail online points to stories including “Woman’s Sphere” and “The Convalescent,” along with a contribution to Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series.
Very little reliable biographical information seems to survive in easily accessible sources, so it is hard to say much with confidence about Kemper’s life beyond the published work itself. That makes this author one of those intriguing literary figures who now live mostly through the magazines and anthologies that preserved the stories.
For listeners, that rarity can be part of the appeal: Kemper’s fiction comes from the rich magazine culture of the early 20th century, when short stories were a major part of everyday reading.