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Charles Tenney Jackson: writings, sorted; and about
writing : primarily fiction (books listed on this page)
with some comments, but rather more transcriptions of contemporary reviews.
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- Losers’ Luck, subtitled “Being the Questionable Enterprises of a Yachtsman, a Princess, and Certain Filibusters in Central America” (1905)
Penn State copy/scan, only via hathitrust : linka “central American adventure.” Filibusters have come up previously, see the Albert Lagerstedt posts at 132 and 132a and the essay by Miss Fanny Juda at 132b. There seems to have been an aura of (misplaced) romance around the term (that may have fed into or related to romance around the Spanish-American War, as well).
reviewed in The New York Times by H. I. Brock (November 18, 1905) — “C. T. Jackson’s Story of a Strenuous Yankee Who Played With Destiny.”
transcription —
You remember Mr. Kipling’s not altogether soothing characterization of the American in “The Seven Seas.” “Uncouth, disreputable, vast.” Charles Tenney Jackson in his story called "Loser’s [sic] Luck," (Henry Holt & Co.,) has taken Mr. Kipling’s illogical and elate Yankee for his hero. With concrete ends in view Mr. Jackson has tamed and bottled Mr. Kipling’s poetically vague “spirit” into a young Western millionaire, a restless, reckless wanderer on land and sea, and the owner of a swift sailing yacht. This young man (in the words of an incidental ex-stable boy) he sends out to be “meal ticket to a foolish little empire” down in the evil and miasmatic region of Central America. Where the “meal ticket” is, there must the lady be also. Any stable boy can tell you that. The lady in this case combines in one person (a dark-eyed and slender one) the charms of up-to-date girlhood, the baleful splendors of the heroine-adventuress of romance, and the immemorial inconsequences of the true woman
The story is riotously one of adventure, of plots, perfidy, carnage, love, and loyalty unto death, but as in the girl, so in the tale, there is in the midst of the barbarous trappings the spirit of the twentieth century. Dolores Delgado y Montezuma is (obviously, and after all her dreams of Princesshood) a spoiled young person of our time — playing her part with that tragic earnestness and sublime disregard for reasonable consequences (especially to others) which marks the modern young woman with eager ethical ideals. And the others — the men — these are merely playing to please Dolores — at first much as one plays with children who show by pitifully trembling lips that they are going to be hurt and cry if one doesn’t — in the end swept by the momentum of the game into a fever of enthusiasm which makes it seem the right, proper, and glorious and manly and heavenly thing to fight and bleed and die for what one knew in the beginning was a schoolgirl’s silly dream.
In a day when all the intrinsically soul-inspiring things have to be done reasonably, sanely, slowly, diplomatically, with infinite committee work, if you want a simple idea to fight for and die for in a perfectly primitive manner, you must create the conditions artificially.
So Mr. Jackson has done — and got thereby a romance — without sacrificing either the contemporaneousness of his actors or insulting the “cynic devil” (to go back to Mr. Kipling) in the blood of his readers. To be sure, it is romance — not in any sort a human documentary report. The extreme up-to-dateness of some of the language, too, (to mention nothing else,) proves plainly enough that the book is not planned as a literary monument. It is, in short, strictly contemporary fiction of the temporary order. But it sweeps you along and provides thrills of several distinct kinds.
The story (to descend to a few particulars) lays hold of the unwary reader on the waterside at San Francisco. Mr. Alonzo Stevenson’s luxurious yacht Itata is in port with a queer crew. Mr. Stevenson supposes that the vessel is being outfitted to take him and a party of friends to Tahiti. The fact is that Miss Dolores Delgado has secretly corrupted the crew and stolen the yacht and stocked it with arms. She seizes a moment when Stevenson and three friends of his (one of them the ex-stable boy) are aboard, to up anchor and set sail. The very existence of Miss Dolores is unknown to Mr. Stevenson till he finds her in his cabin — with armed men on guard and a graceful young Frenchman sitting opposite smoking a cigarette. It is a dramatic scene — and Mr. Stevenson’s language to the lady is at first exceedingly harsh. This scene and many others following are described (with whimsical asides) by Prof. Eldred, an expert in metallurgy, who is one of the kidnapped friends of the owner. The second is Lieut. Lamont of the United States Navy. The third, called “Danny,” has already been mentioned. The graceful French young man is, it appears, also a prisoner — and everything is most bafflingly mysterious, especially Miss Dolores Delgado, who is, by the way, perfectly chaperoned.
Dolores — all the men call her Dolores, for aesthetic reasons, doubtless — is now imperial, now scintillant, now dissolved in tears. The professor is observent, the naval Lieutenant most gallant, Mr. Stevenson perfectly horrid, and the French young man very cynical, indeed.
That is on the yacht. Once landed in Central America you find yourself in the midst of one of the revolutions indigenous to the region. There is a mixed soldiery, a political General, a German enthusiast, and an Irishman who knows how to fight guns. Also the guns. It is Dolores’s revolution, her army. Mr. Stevenson becomes Captain of the Foreign Legion, even the scoffing young Frenchman (who has coffee plantations in the land and much riches) is drawn into the fantastic business. He will not be beaten by Mr. Steenson, and Mr. Stevenson has declared that if Dolores wants a revolution — an empire — so long as men can be got at 26 cents a day each, she shall have it. Why not? says Mr. Stevenson. “I’ll grubstake the outfit.”
Thereupon marching and some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting you ever read about — Mausers popping, Gatlings whirr-whirring, field guns thundering, and men charging, falling, dying, raving, and fiercely defending stone walls that tumble the while, crashing about their ears. Nor are treasons and stratagems omitted.
For the end of the story, it is no part of this reviewer’s plan to foreshadow it. Mr. Jackson has written an unusually readable tale. He is to be permitted, so far as may be, to impart it to his readers in his own way.
H. I. Brock.
link (paywall)Kipling furnishes the epigram to the title page —
“Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets th’ embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To grasp the iron hand of Fate,
Or match with Destiny for Beers.”
Kipling’s “The American”brings to (this) mind some episodes of the 1980’s television series Miami Vice.
- The Day of Souls (1910), illustrated by Paul J. Meylan.
NYPL copy/scan via hathitrust : link ditto, via google books : linkThe story is set in pre-earthquake San Francisco, and concerns a kind of drifter (college student, soldier, now political hustler) and the people (women above all) in his life.
Don Napoli provides a good review/summary at his Reading California blog : link (June 21, 2011)
Brief summary/review in The Bookman 31:3 (May 1910) : 324 : link (hathitrust)
transcription :
The scene is in old San Francisco, and the story deals largely with politics and political corruption, the hero being a leader among the “grafters,” and with the Bohemian side of life in that city. John Arnold, who, from one bad deed to another, descends about as far down the ladder as a man very well can and still retain the spark of manhood within, is the author’s interesting subject. His downward path continues until a friend whom he had unintentionally misled in regard to a bet on a horse race commits suicide. His eyes are opened to the dreadful consequences of his deed and he begins to see the life he has led in a new light. With this awakening comes the desire and longing for a higher life. Then his struggle is begun, and the title the author has chosen, The Day of Souls, the name given by the Japanese to one of their feasts, in the preparation for which men are expected to strengthen and purify their thoughts, signifies the cleansing of John Arnold and his struggle upward with a woman’s help.
reviewed and described by Nettie S. Gaines, “With Our Western Books and Writers” in The Grizzly Bear 8:6 (April 1911) : 5 : link
transcription below :
Charles Tenney Jackson’s late novel, “The Day of Souls,” deals with that phase of life in San Francisco which all thinking people must be familiar with, if they are ever to do their part in helping to redeem people from wrong ways of living. Those who figure in this story are interested in prizefighting, horseracing, dance halls, corrupt politics and all that has to do with slum life and graft in general. It is not a book of the hour, but it sets one to thinking of some of the mighty important questions which all of us have to do with indirectly, if not directly, and out of this careful thinking the result for good can scarely be estimated. Far reaching and in many directions will its influence be felt, for we do not have to go to San Francisco to begin the work each one may be led to to; such conditions are found almost everywhere.
The hero of the story, Jack Arnold, has run the whole gamut of experiences with the “man of the world” encounters. The story opens with a sweet, innocent Mendocino County girl madly in love with him, but at the last minute we are made to see, “There’s so much good in the worst of us,” for Jack tells her it would be wrong for him to marry her, because he does not love her. She, with childish faith in him and her great love for him, forces him to accept a large amount of money from her, for she is a wealthy girl. He takes it for granted that she returns to her northern home. This money brings much trouble into Jack’s after life. When he is going at a rapid pace down grade, Grace Wayne, a street evangelist, comes into his life in a peculiar way. Now the long struggle begins and we find Jack saying, “I suppose every fellow things that women could keep a man to the best in him if they tried — but most of them never tried with me. I was good to laugh with and at when the lights shown bright, but when the dark days came I saw how it was.”
A third woman figures prominently in this story. She is Nella Free, whose life has been on much the same plane as Jack Arnold’s. It is not until the closing pages that the reader feels quite sure which of the three will become his life partner and succeed in making a man of him. “The Day of Souls” is a most fitting title for this great Western novel, which depicts present conditions in San Francisco better than any other has yet done.H. L. Mencken, writes favorably of the book and its author in “A Glance at the Spring Fiction,” The Smart Set 30:4 (April 1910) : 155-56 : link
and/but —
Carey McWilliams dismisses the (then) bulk of Jackson’s oeuvre, as he does the work of many writers who gravitate to New York and others points East, thus :
“After Charles Tenney Jackson, the author of that brilliant novel of San Francisco, The Day of Souls, fled east, he quickly became a manufacturer of potboilers.”
— “Young Man, Stay West” in Southwest Review 15:3 (Spring 1929) : 301-309 (304) : link (jstor)
- My Brother’s Keeper (1910, 1913 this edition, with illustrations by Arthur William Brown) : 171
via google : linkreview by George Middleton in The Bookman (“A Magazine of Literature and Life”) 32:3 (November 1910) : 304-304 : link (U Illinois copy/scan, via hathitrust)
same (Cornell copy/scan, via google books)transcription below :
It is ever a truism that the real significance of any movement is eventually measured more by its leavening power than by its mere numerical adherents; and in the radical thought of the day on social and economic questions, it is interesting to observe the way it has been percolating into our fiction, colouring its substance and treatment. Without being too doctrinaire, the vivid plea for the worker, amid the forces instinctively opposing him, that was presented in Charles Tenney Jackson’s first novel, The Day of Souls — easily the best picture of San Francisco, next to McTeague, which any American novelist has written — has been repeated, from a different angle, in his new story, My Brother’s Keeper. Instead, however, of taking the kaleidoscopic forces of the lower world as they existed before the earthquake, with their antennae feeling all walks of life, he has moved his scene to Chicago, “the crucible of America,” and focussed his theme upon a few men and women who become, in reality, vitalised social attitudes. The influence of Bernard Shaw is, oddly enough, felt in Mr. Jackson’s treatment of his principal character, around whom the story revolves, but Rand is more than a mouthpiece spouting the author’s radical views; with an almost Meredithian instinct, Rand recognises that only by putting sensation or theory of living to the test of circumstance does either become of value to character and society. It is Rand’s self-elected mission, then, pyrotechnically and bizarrely to touch the lives of the other characters, to make them question their own ideals and to measure the sincerity of their pretensions by the actual test of service and living. There is nothing particularly startling or original in this, but it serves to lift the theme of the story above much of the passing fiction of the moment. Besides this, Mr. Jackson has succeeded admirably in placing his spectacular hero in the midst of a series of highly dramatic situations, which would grip the reader for their own sake even if their deeper significance were lost.
A minister, unfrocked because he declines to explain a misunderstood charity, wanderer, poseur, brawler, day labourer, mill-toiler, strike-assassin, Rand returns to the house of his rich father, a judge, and proceeds to put it in order by opening the windows, dusting its thick layer of complacency and generally upsetting its settled routine. With the Judge is living Ennisley, a professor of economics, and Demetra, his wife. Ennisley is really a crusader in social theories for the betterment of “his fellow-brothers” and a believer in the vision of a greater race which the crucible of American life, with its maw-like eagerness for assimilation, alone can bring about. He has married. Demetra, a Pole, whom, as it happened, Rand years before had befriended by giving her the opportunity to better her earth-tied condition. Ennisley is on the point of persuading the Judge to subscribe more money for advancing his reforms in the Rand mills, to better the condition of the workers, when Karasac, an anarchist, resorts to bomb-violence, resulting in several deaths. Karasac escapes to seek Ennisley, whose theories of equality and brotherhood have been by ignorance so tragically misread. The police are following Karasac, and in a splendid ironically written scene, Karasac appeals for protection to Ennisley, who, realising his great mission and dream will be destroyed should his own indirect responsibility for the crime be known, denies the anarchist’s acquaintance. But Rand, with a diabolical enjoyment of the situation, proceeds to protect his “beastbrother,” who, in fact, is also Demetra’s brother. It is the reaction from this upon the various characters that the greater part of the novel deals: Ennisley’s justification of the Nietzschean text that “the community is worth more than the individual,” Demetra’s horror at accepting cosey safety through Rand’s expense and the final heroism with which each faces the naked facts of their own married life. From it husband and wife, together with the disillusioned little Polish secretary, who loves Ennisley, are led, under Rand’s purging mockery, service and final sacrifice, into a larger spiritual kingdom.
The diffusion of incidents which the subject matter of The Day of Souls necessitated is lacking here, for the structural treatment in this new novel betokens a distinct advance in the author’s art. Indeed, there is a dramatic sense of the most practical sort which at times seems better suited for the stage than the novel, and, no doubt, this novel will find its way to the footlights, though much of its psychology would be regrettably lost. What makes this novelist significant is that he knows how to write vivid dialogue revealing an intimate understanding of both men and women, the influence upon them of environment and a splendid grasp on the social problems of our American life. And beneath it rests the deep conviction that a change is impending for a better equality among all those contending forces which, in professing to solve, our economic and social schemes have in reality created.
George MiddletonMy Brother’s Keeper was dismissed by H. L Mencken in “A Stack of Novels,” The Smart Set (March 1911) —
“an extremely disappointing second novel by the author of ‘The Day of Souls’”
link - The Midlanders, illustrated by Arthur William Brown (1912) : link (hathitrust)
basis for a film (same name, mostly lost; 1920)
wikipedia : linkreview (and summary) by George Middleton in The Bookman (“A Magazine of Literature and Life”) 36:2 (October 1912) : 196-197
link (U California copy/scan, via hathitrust)
same (via google)transcription below :
The author of The Day of Souls has deserted the field of the underworld, which he furrowed with such understanding, and turned in his new novel to the specialised life of a typical middle western town. The keen interest he also revealed in My Brother’s Keeper, for the social and economic problems of the day, has not failed him though he has acquired a new manner of approach and a more varied use of his material. The mordant bitter note of the first novel, which made it easily one of the most unusual and vivid portrayals of the old San Francisco any American novelist has given, is now deserted with only occasional flashes, and in its stead we find a charm and lyric quality combined with more delicacy of characterisation. There is, too, in The Midlanders less of the rigidity of My Brother’s Keeper, which at times made. it more of a tract than the sincere exteriorisation of different social points of view as typified by warring, irreconcilable characters. Yet this novel before us, which is by no means a perfect piece of work, justifies us in believing that Mr. Jackson is an author of power and capacity who will, no doubt, with the sureness that can only come of time, gain an enviable place among the young men who are already worth watching.
It is only natural that any novelist alive to the political changes which have been evolved in the past few years should chose a middle western town for the scene of conflict. It is here the new forces have locked in combat with the old, here they have begun to achieve some definite results. But it would be manifestly unfair to call Mr. Jackson’s novel an attempt to catch the core of the Progressive movement, as Mr. Merwin has, for example, in The Citadel, since he has merely used it as a background to what is in reality a love story and the portrayal of a community.
The story opens, however, in the bayoux of Louisiana, which the author pictures with poetry and apparent authority. It starts out with all the nonchalance of pure romance when Aurelie, a mere child, is kidnapped from the orphan asylum by two old soldiers — Captain Tintletoes and Uncle Michigan, who each has a cork leg and a roving disposition. To their astonishment they find they have a girl instead of the boy whom they had desired to carry out some mystical vision of old Tinkletoes. They make the most of the mistake and the author makes the most of his opportunities; for these early scenes are full of open air and are delightful to a degree. Finally, Tinkletoes dies and Michigan feels free to wander forth with the girl. They settle, because their boat gets stuck, on the outskirts of a small town in Iowa. Here Aurelie falls in love with a son of “one of the best families,” who is in turn captivated by the illusive difference of this child of nature. But, unbeknown to Aurelie, her picture has been sent into the offices of a Chicago newspaper and she wins the beauty prize. An interesting bit of psychology is here interpreted by the author, who, in the contrasting reactions. upon the young man and girl, indicates the radical divergence of their birth and bringing up. In the separation which, of course, ensues, because of the vulgarity in all this publicity, added to the opposition of the young man’s family, Aurelie, fired with the desire to be somebody, and grasping the opportunity offered, goes on the stage and manages in time to make a success. The gradual change in her character through contact with the world of men as apart from the nature she had alone known, makes her as fascinating as she is interesting. This characterisation of a rather unusual girl, in fact, is the best thing in the book though it falters sadly at the end. As Aurelie is drawn there is nothing to suggest she will ever settle down as the author asks us to believe she will. Indeed her chief charm is just this very uncertainty and impulse which makes her, for example, come back and shock the old town by riding around the sedate “square” three times in a taxi, while an actress friend smokes a cigarette.
The plot obviously takes possession of all the characters in the final chapters, and while the melodramatic complications are exciting and cleverly manipulated, yet the high literary quality suffers. The one character which escapes this criticism and which remains with the reader, is the newspaper man, Curran, who eventually turns out to be Aurelie’s father. The unphrased attraction he has for Aurelie before he knows his relation to her is handled with rare delicacy and intuition. In Curran the author has caught with understanding and skill the type of wanderer and failure — the round peg in the square hole who late in life suddenly finds himself. In the readjustment he finally makes with life credit is due to the new spirit of usefulness which comes to him through contact with Janet and Arne. It is with men and women such as they that the author makes us feel the future success of our democracy rests. One speech of Arne’s may be quoted, since it describes the inspiration which first came to him from the hill-topping University in Wisconsin :I’ve lain in bed after bucking all night on solids and economic history, and listened to the young men going up the hill to Carmack’s lectures-the young men up the hill in the snow at seven o’clock! And when he declared that the spirit of socialism was the spirit of every good thing the world was fighting for; when he told them to go out and preach the recall, and the State control of wealth — I’ve heard them shout, and others going up the hill took up the shout. That’s what we’re getting, along with soil culture and forest preservation and engineering — I tell you it sounds like the march of a new civilisation — the tramp of the young men going up the hill.
George Middleton.—
“Why I Wrote The Midlanders,” in La Follette’s Weekly Magazine 4:48 (Madison, Wisconsin, November 30, 1912) : 5-6
link (via google books)
link (Princeton copy/scan, once upon a time Iowa State Teachers College, Library) - The Fountain of Youth. Illustrated with Photographs. (New York: Outing Publishing Company, 1914) : 220-221
LoC copy/scan (among several via hathitrust) : link
LoC description thus : “Narrative of vacation experiences in the Gulf region of Louisiana southwest of New Orleans.” - John the Fool : An American Romance, Illustrated by Hazel Roberts (1915)
(U California copy/scan, via hathitrust) : linkJohn the Fool Bayou, in Louisiana : link
review by Griffin Mace in The Bookman (May 1915) : 326-327 : link
transcription —
Mr. Jackson's new book is chiefly distinguished by its atmosphere. Selecting a locale which has been little pictured since Mr. Cable's earlier stories, the Louisiana bayoux still have all the romance best suited for a typical adventure story. And Mr. Jackson , whose The Midlanders revealed him as clever craftsman in this type, has not failed to give the reader a vivid sense of this little-known section of our country. The narrow , winding stretches of water, which reach, like long fingers, into the heart of that thinly settled marshland, shark ridden, touching the settlements of a polyglot mixture of the old world and the new, full of moody reflections from the Gulf beyond — these bayoux are, indeed, still full of the romance which made them dear to Lafitte and other pirates, whose caches may even yet contain the Spanish doubloons so effectively lifted from passing ships. To an admirable degree, this new novel — named after one of the back-waters — retains this atmosphere. With the story, too, which Mr. Jackson has chosen, one need not cavil, since it is, in the main, frank romance, full of exaggerations and frequently incredible. Briefly, it is the record of a man who finds himself, through contact with the forces of nature, a man civilised yet desk-ridden, who sees the need of testing himself, and so selects a hard task, where muscle is to curb character to a fixed intention.
At the start, however, the story threatens to be a study of the woman question now so prevalent and indicating the growth of the movement. The scene in which Clell discovers he cannot marry a woman because he hasn’t enough to support her, though she is making enough to support them both, is an honest transcription of a common masculine attitude, selfish yet understandable in view of our traditional education. But it must be confessed that the author somewhat jars our expectancy by adopting a different method the minute he carries Clell to the bayoux, with the man he hates; for the theme, as intimated, is not carried out. A social study is jerked into a series of adventures. The details need not be recounted; they are fairly typical, and consequently will interest the reader. Some of the characters, though, are unique, and indicate how closely Mr. Jackson has observed the locale, where he has himself spent so much time. Laure, for example, is a vibrant little creature, as moody as the land she so tenaciously clutches when the Northerners try to take it from her; her mixed descent is cleverly suggested by the author — a comment which might be made upon the other natives, whose language, like their blood, contains four or five strains. Mr. Jackson understands the art of projection through dialogue, and this novel, as My Brother’s Keeper, shows him the possessor of a rare sense of personality.
But in spite of these commendable qualities, admirers of Mr. Jackson cannot but regret that he has not, in his later novels, approached the raw power of his first book, which was an unforgettable fragment of life. The Day of Souls, with its minute realism, established him as a writer who was to be reckoned with. The faults in that novel — a mixture of methods in treatment — still cling to him, though, in the study of San Francisco, its very uncouthness suited the subject and environment he had chosen. He has gained in art, and it is hoped that some day he may be tempted by a theme which will entice him into realities. Mean time as a writer of romance he is worthy of consideration.
Griffin Mace - The Call to the Colors, illustrated by W. W. Clarke (D. Appleton and Company, 1918)
link (NYPL copy)
juvenile - Jimmy May in the fighting line, illustrated by W. W. Clarke (D. Appleton and Company, 1918)
link (LoC views)
juvenile - Captain Sazarac (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922)
link (NYPL copy, via hathitrust; where others available)seller image of book, in dustjacket : link (Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc.)
on Jean Lafitte (1780-1823), privateer, trader (including of slaves)
wikipedia : link—
The book is dedicated “To Carlotta of Old New Orleans”
Charles Tenney Jackson married Carlotta Weir of New Orleans and spent a great deal of time in and around the city from 1911 to 1919. In Captain Sazerac [sic] (1922), a novel dealing with the Lafitte pirates, he has made skillful use of the historical background of New Orleans.
from the chapter on “Literature,” in the Federal Writers’ Project, New Orleans City Guide (1938) : 120 : link (archive.org)
—
Captain Sazarac, by Charles Tenney Jackson; photoplay title, The Eagle of the sea; illustrated with scenes from the photoplay, a Paramount picture.
New York, Grosset & Dunlap [1922]
link (U Ohio copy/scan, via hathitrust)
same (via google books)wikipedia, on “The Eagle of the Sea” : link
Florence Vidor (1895-1977), interesting life : wikipedia : link
Ricardo Cortez (1900-1977), ditto : wikipedia : link - The Buffalo Wallow : A Prairie Boyhood (1953)
autobiographical, told from a boy’s point of view
Bison reprint (1953) borrowable at archive.org : link (one of two scans)
- New Orleans adventure; a story of the last romantic flicker of piracy-privateering in the Gulf and New Orleans of the 1830’s. (Philadelphia, Dorrance, 1955)
LoC permalink : link - stories listed by date of publication at the Fiction Mags Index : link
aside : may need to search by author, as links seem to change over time. main page at : link“The Sea-Horse of Grand Terre” in St. Nicholas 41:7 (May 1914) : 577-583 : link
“The Man Who Cursed the Lilies”
in O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 (1922) : linkJackson was writing pulp stories well into the 1940’s, e.g., “Rope’s End” in Short Stories (March 25, 1944), with this summary (similar setting to “The Man Who Cursed the Lilies”) —
What was a regular cowhand doing herding cattle through the Bayous and relying on a crazy Cajun engineer?
110-118 : link (archive.org)
Charles Tenney Jackson (1874-1955)
- Nebraska author link
“Jackson’s book The Buffalo Wallow : A Prairie Boyhood is a lightly fictionalized memoir of the author’s experience growing up in a sod house. A 1953 New York Times reviewer called the book ‘one of the best books about childhood and American pioneer life that I have ever read.’ (NYT 3-6-1953) The book was expanded from an article that appeared in The Saturday Review magazine (3-21-1953). Tennyson was a successful novelist several of whose novels were turned into movies in the 1920s.”
- Jackson’s entry in Who’s Who in America (1908-09) :
Jackson, Charles Tenney. journalist; b. Oct. 15, 1874; s. Col Charles Henry and Eliza (Tenney) J.: ed. Madison (Wis.) High Sch., 1893-6, Univ. of Wis., 1896-7; left to enter army; pvt. 1st Wis. Vols., 1898; unmarried. Corr. mid-west papers during Spanish-Am war; editor Modesto (Calif.) Evening News, 1905-6; on staff San Francisco Chronicle, since 1907. Mem. Loyal Legion. Author: Loser's Luck, 1905 h4 [?]; Day of Souls, 12. Contb’r to mags. Residence: Piedmont, Calif.
link
- on his earlier years :
Charles Tenney Jackson, author of the story, “The Sea-Horse of Grand Terre,” which was published in St. Nicholas for May, was born in St. Louis, October 15, 1874, his father being an army officer. At the age of eight Mr. Jackson went into the cattle country of Western Nebraska, and until the age of nineteen drifted about the West without any more schooling, he says, than would hurt one, but getting mean time a love of the outdoors that has prevented him since from living in one spot for any length of time. He then had three years of desultory schooling in Madison, Wisconsin, and one at the University of Wisconsin, but went into the volunteer service during the Spanish War. He wrote his first story in camp and sent it to the Youth’s Companion. He then became a correspondent for the Evening Wisconsin, of Milwaukee, and was afterward on the staff of that paper. It was not, however, until he had gone to California on his way to the Philippines that, meeting with an accident which crippled him for some months, he wrote another story, which McClure’s published, and then one for the Cosmopolitan, the acceptance of which, he says, filled him with some amazement, for except as a means of temporary livelihood while getting over that bad knee, he had no idea whatever of becoming an author. He next wrote a novel of Central American adventure, entitled “Loser’s Luck,” which was published by Henry Holt & Company in 1905. After that came more wandering years and intermittent newspaper work in San Francisco after the earthquake, when he wrote “The Day of Souls,” published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1910. That year Mr. Jackson drifted down the Mississippi on a houseboat, and he has been in Louisiana much of the time since. On the Gold Bug he has written “My Brother’s Keeper,” published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1911; “The Midlanders,” published by the same house in 1912; and this fall his novel, “John-The-Fool,” will be published, and “The Fountain of Youth,” a whimsical journal of knocking about on the south coast of Louisiana, the bayous and passes of the river, will be brought out by the Outing Company. Mr Jackson says he is still much more interested in guns, boats, dogs, Cajune, camp cooking, a sweet pipe, and a cheery comrade than he is in literature, just as he was when he wrote his first yarn.
ex The Writer (Boston; July 1914) : 104 : link
- entry in A. Lawrence, ed., Whose Who Among Modern American Authors 3 (1927-28) : 440 : link
transcription :
Jackson, Charles Tenney: Author; b. St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 15, 1874; s. Col. Charles Henry and Eliza (Tenney) J.; educ Madison (Wis.) Schols., Univ. Wis.; m. Carlotta Weir, Dec. 18, 1919; AUTHOR: Loser’s Luck, 1905; The Day of Souls, 1919; (screened as “The Show”); My Brother’s Keeper, 1911; The Midlanders, 1912 (screened under the same title); John the Fool, 1914; The Fountain of Youth, 1914; Captain Sazarac, 1921 (screened as “The Eagle of the Sea”); Call to the Colors (juvenile), 1925; Jimmy May (juvenile), 1925; contr. to Short Stories, Adventure, Popular, Colliers, Woman’s Home Comp., Amer. Boy, Boy’s Life, Amer. Girl and other mags.; gen. char. writ. novels, short stories, screen scripts; feature writer San Francisco papers, 1907-08; Editor Modesto (Calif.) daily newspaper, 1905-06; CLUBS: Authors (London); Authors Guild; Gunn Key Golf, B. W. I.; OFFICE: care Bobbs-Merrill Pub Co., 185 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y.; HOME: 1437 Rhode Island Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C.
- Charles Tenney Jackson papers, [ca. 1915-1953]
UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library : BANC MSS 75/111 zLOCAL
two boxes
Abstract:
Include letters from Edward Weeks (Atlantic Monthly), D. Laurance Chambers (Bobbs Merrill Company), A. Proctor (Adventure) and Austin Olney (Houghton Mifflin Company); manuscripts of unpublished stories, novels and a play; clippings on Seminole Indians and hurricanes.
link (as of 20231025)on writing
- several passages in
Fiction Writers on Fiction Writing : Advice, Opinions and a Statement of Their Own Working Methods by More Than One Hundred Authors Edited, with notes, by Arthur Sullivant Hoffman (1923)
link (hathitrust)
link (gutenberg)
26 October 2023