Hale, Edward Everett
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1822-1909) US Unitarian preacher, abolitionist, contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly and author, who often wrote as by Captain Frederic Ingham, though sometimes Ingham serves as frame narrator for Club Stories. Ingham provides something of this function in Hale's best known single work, The Man Without a Country (December 1863 The Atlantic Monthly; 1865 chap), later assembled in The Man Without a Country and Other Tales (coll 1868), about an army officer who abjures his native country with a curse, and is doomed, perhaps echoing the Flying Dutchman [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], never again to see or hear news of his homeland. Sybaris and Other Homes (coll 1869; vt Colonel Ingham's Visit to Sybaris 2009) is of some sf interest, specifically for "My Visit to Sybaris: From the Rev Frederic Ingham's Papers" (July 1867 Atlantic Monthly), describing a Utopian colony of Sybarians uncovered on an Island off the coast of Italy (see Lost Race).
Back to Back: A Story of Today (1878; exp vt How They Lived in Hampton 1888) [for full titles see Checklist below] unexcitedly proposes a modestly utopian system of cooperation between workers and owners, but more tamely in Massachusetts. In much the same vein, the Ten Times One sequence, beginning with Ten Times One Is Ten: The Possible Reformation: A Story in Nine Chapters (January-June 1870 Old and New; 1871) as by Captain Frederic Ingham, narratizes into utopian proposals the haunting of ten active men, who are possessed into applying the social benefits conveyed through the ideas of the dead Harry Wadsworth, a virtuous bluestocking unused (it may be) to manifesting as an apparition. Four and Five: A Story of a Lend-a-Hand Club: Ten Times One Series (1891) and other titles further the same uplifting regimen.
Also of sf interest from Hale's prolific but heterogeneous output are "Crusoe in New York" (187? Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper), an educational Robinsonade couched as a Parody of the original novel and set in Manhattan (see New York); and Hands Off (March 1881 Harper's New Monthly Magazine; 1895 chap), which interestingly places two time-travelling spirits in Biblical times, where as an experiment they construct an Alternate History in which the young Joseph escapes being sold into Egyptian Slavery, with disastrous results, including the Phoenician conquest of the Mediterranean.
Hale is of greatest sf importance for "The Brick Moon: from the Papers of Captain Frederic Ingham" (October 1869 The Atlantic Monthly) and its short sequel, "Life in the Brick Moon" (February 1870 The Atlantic Monthly), both being revised into one story in His Level Best and Other Stories (coll 1873), later reprinted in The Brick Moon and Other Stories (coll 1899); it was finally published independently as The Brick Moon: From the Papers of Captain Frederic Ingham (1971 chap), the whole told within a loose Club Story frame under the aegis of Captain Ingham . This assemblage of story fragments and reminiscences comprises probably the first even remotely convincing attempt to describe an artificial Earth satellite or Space Station, along with its accidental launching into orbit and the attempts of those stranded upon it to survive. In The Brick Moon & Another Brick in the Moon (anth/coll 2014), Adam Roberts offers a kind of Sequel by Another Hand that spoofs, mildly, the implausibilities of the original.
The Tales for Travellers series, under Hale's editorship, each comprised one Hale story and others by various hands, some sf. [JC]
see also: History of SF; Invention.
Edward Everett Hale
born Roxbury, Massachusetts: 3 April 1822
died Roxbury [annexed to Boston 1868], Massachusetts: 10 June 1909
works
series
Ten Times One
- Ten Times One Is Ten: The Possible Reformation: A Story in Nine Chapters (Boston, Massachusetts: Roberts Brothers, 1871) as by Captain Frederic Ingham [Ten Times One: hb/nonpictorial]
- Red and White: A Christmas Story: A Christmas Present to the Ten Times One is Ten Club (Boston, Massachusetts: J Stillman Smith, 1887) [story: chap: Ten Times One: hb/]
- Four and Five: A Story of a Lend-a-Hand Club: Ten Times One Series (Boston, Massachusetts: Roberts Brothers, 1891) [Ten Times One: hb/]
- Ten Times One Is Ten and Other Stories (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1899) [coll: Ten Times One: hb/]
individual titles
- If, Yes, and Perhaps: Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations, with Some Bits of Fact (Boston, Massachusetts: Ticknor and Fields, 1868) [coll: hb/]
- Sybaris and Other Homes (Boston, Massachusetts: Fields, Osgood and Co, 1869) [coll: hb/]
- Colonel Ingham's Visit to Sybaris (no place given: Kessinger Publishing, 2009) [vt of the above: pb/]
- His Level Best and Other Stories (Boston, Massachusetts: James R Osgood and Company, 1873) [coll: the edition from Roberts Brothers misdated 1872 is in fact a reprint: hb/]
- Back to Back: A Story of Today (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1878) [first appeared November-December 1877 Harper's New Monthly Magazine: in the publisher's Half Hour Series: hb/]
- How They Lived in Hampton: A Study of Practical Christianity Applied in the Manufacture of Woollens (Boston, Massachusetts: J Stillman Swift and Co, 1888) [exp vt of the above: hb/]
- Practical Christianity Applied in the Manufacture of Woollens; Or, How They Lived In Hampton (London: Cassell and Company, 1892) [vt of the above: hb/]
- How They Lived in Hampton: A Study of Practical Christianity Applied in the Manufacture of Woollens (Boston, Massachusetts: J Stillman Swift and Co, 1888) [exp vt of the above: hb/]
- Crusoe in New York, and Other Tales (Boston, Massachusetts: Roberts Brothers, 1880) [coll: contains "Crusoe in New York" (187? Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper): hb/]
- Hands Off (Boston, Massachusetts: J Stillman Smith, 1895) [chap: first appeared March 1881 Harper's New Monthly Magazine: hb/]
- The Brick Moon and Other Stories (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1899) [coll: hb/]
- The Brick Moon: From the Papers of Captain Frederic Ingham (Barre, Massachusetts: The Imprint Society, 1971) [coll of linked stories: chap: first appeared October-December 1869 The Atlantic Monthly as "The Brick Moon: from the Papers of Captain Frederic Ingham", and February 1870 The Atlantic Monthly as "Life in the Brick Moon": illus/hb/Michael McCurdy]
works as editor
series
Tales for Travellers
- Tales for Travellers: The Lost Palace and Other Tales (Boston, Massachusetts: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875) [anth: chap: Tales for Travellers: pb/nonpictorial]
- Tales for Travellers: Nicolette and Aucassin, and Other Tales (Boston, Massachusetts: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875) [anth: chap: Tales for Travellers: pb/nonpictorial]
- Tales for Travellers: One Hundred Years Ago: How the War Began: A Series of Sketches from Original Authorities (Boston, Massachusetts: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875) [anth: chap: Tales for Travellers: pb/nonpictorial]
- Tales for Travellers: Spoons in a Wherry and Other Tales (Boston, Massachusetts: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875) [anth: chap: Tales for Travellers: pb/nonpictorial]
- Tales for Travellers: Stand and Wait and Other Tales (Boston, Massachusetts: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875) [anth: chap: Tales for Travellers: pb/nonpictorial]
- Tales for Travellers: Story of the Simplon and Other Tales (Boston, Massachusetts: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875) [anth: chap: Tales for Travellers: pb/nonpictorial]
- Tales for Travellers: Ten Time One is Ten: The Class of '71 (Boston, Massachusetts: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875) [anth: chap: for other Ten Times One volumes see above: Tales for Travellers: pb/nonpictorial]
individual titles as editor
- Rudolph Erich Raspe. Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels (Boston, Massachusetts: D C Heath and Company, 1900) [edited with introduction by Hale: hb/]
about the author
- Sam Moskowitz. "The Real Earth Satellite Story" in Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Co, 1963) [nonfiction: coll: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry