Harold Brainerd Hersey (April 11, 1893March 1956) was an American pulp magazine editor and publisher, publishing several volumes of poetry. His pulp industry observations were published in hardback as Pulpwood Editor (1937).
Early life
Hersey was born on April 11, 1893, in
Montana to Augustine Haynes "Doc" Hersey, a newspaper reporter and publisher. The family moved to Washington, D.C., in the late 1890s. While Mrs. Hersey and two daughters stayed at home, Doc took Harold with him on globe-trotting reportorial assignments. They visited many places in North America. In 1904–05, they traveled to the Far East for the Russo-Japanese War. The pair traveled extensively in eastern Asia. Doc died in D.C. in 1907, leaving Harold with his mother and sisters.
[Locke, John. "Harold Hersey: Tales of an Ink-Stained Wretch", a comprehensive Hersey biography, included in City of Numbered Men: The Best of Prison Stories (2010).]
Hersey worked at the Library of Congress for eight years while getting a degree from George Washington University at night. About 1914, he married Merle Williams; they had one child, a daughter Dorothy, Harold Hersey's only offspring. The marriage was brief. (Merle W. Hersey later moved to New York and edited a succession of sex-oriented "girly pulps" from about 1925–36.)
Hersey moved to Greenwich Village, New York, and helped Margaret Sanger launch her journal Birth Control Review.[[1]] and Ezra Pound.
Mid life
During World War I, Hersey was a lieutenant in public relations, but never went overseas. Several articles on military matters were published in
Scribner's.
Hersey was editor of Minaret magazine in Washington, D. C., with Shaemus O. Sheele, and Herbert Bruncken.
After leaving Street & Smith, Hersey immediately joined new pulp publisher, Clayton Publications in 1919, as a title editor, feature writer and later group editor for several of the Clayton magazines.
Magazine publishers
After Clayton, Hersey had stints working for Bernarr Macfadden, briefly replacing Fulton Oursler as Supervising Editor of the Macfadden magazines (1927), and the Eastern Distributing Company. In late 1928, Hersey with money fronted by a distributor started his own pulp chain, Magazine Publishers, also known as The Hersey Magazines. The covers sported an ancient Indian good luck symbol...a swastika-logo. Titles included
The Dragnet Magazine,
Sky Birds,
Fire Fighters, and
The Underworld Magazine.
Some unknown disagreement with his co-founders/backers resulted in Hersey leaving the company in mid-1929. Magazine Publishers, with former Dell editor
Aron Wyn at the helm, turned into the chain known as the Ace Group.
Good Story Magazine Company
Hersey founded another pulp chain, Good Story Magazine Company, with financial backing from Macfadden. Good Story's
Gangster Stories was an immediate hit. Within a few months, a dozen titles had been issued, including some now-rare one-shots like
Thrills of the Jungle and
Love and War Stories. With the issue of February 1930, another gang pulp,
Racketeer Stories, was introduced. The violence and lawlessness of the two gang pulps provoked outrage. Hersey was threatened with prosecution in the state of New York. The crisis passed, and the gang pulps remained the mainstay of Hersey's chain into 1932.
[Locke, John. "Glorifying the American Goon," introduction to Gang Pulp (Off-Trail Publications, 2008).] Other Good Story pulps include
Prison Stories,
Murder Stories, and
Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories.
Hersey bought the company outright in late 1931, after Macfadden withdrew financing. Hersey went forward as an independent. From then on, the pulps were published by Headquarters, Blue Band, and other imprints. However, the company failed in 1932 and Hersey sold his holdings.[Locke, John. "Harold Hersey: Tales of an Ink-Stained Wretch," included in City of Numbered Men: The Best of Prison Stories (2010).]
Throughout the '30s, Hersey continued to test the market with new magazines. He was editor-in-chief on a string of novelty magazines for H-K Publications (also known as the Hardy-Kelly Group) from 1941 forward.
Works
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Gestures in Ivory: 1919 Britton Publishing Co., New York
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Poetry: Rare and Collectible: 1923 Privately printed
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Night, with illustrations by Elliott Dold, Personal Books Inc., New York, 1923.
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A collection of 21 ballads illustrated by Jerry Delano
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Pulpwood Editor (1937).
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Margaret Sanger: The Biography of the Birth Control Pioneer, New York 1938
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External links
