Jack Snow (writer)
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John Frederick Snow (August 15, 1907 – July 13, 1956), born
Piqua, Ohio Piqua ( ) is a city in Miami County, Ohio, United States, along the Great Miami River. The population was 20,354 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located north of Dayton, Ohio, Dayton, it is part of the Greater Dayton, Dayton metro ...
was an American radio writer, writer of ghost stories, and scholar, primarily of the works of
L. Frank Baum Lyman Frank Baum (; May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author best known for his children's fantasy books, particularly '' The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', part of a series. In addition to the 14 ''Oz'' books, Baum penned 41 other novels ...
. When Baum died in 1919, the twelve-year-old Snow offered to be the next Royal Historian of Oz, but was turned down by a staffer at Baum's publisher, Reilly & Lee. Snow eventually wrote two Oz books: '' The Magical Mimics in Oz'' (1946) and '' The Shaggy Man of Oz'' (1949), as well as '' Who's Who in Oz'' (1954), a guide to the Oz characters, all of which Reilly & Lee published.


Profile

In his second year in high school, the Snow created the first radio review column in American journalism, in ''
The Cincinnati Enquirer ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' is a morning daily newspaper published by Gannett in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. First published in 1841, the ''Enquirer'' is the last remaining daily newspaper in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, altho ...
.'' After graduation, Snow pursued a career in print journalism and primarily in radio, with periods in teachers college and the U. S. Army. He named the
Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
radio station
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, and spent seven years with the
National Broadcasting Company The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
in New York. In 1944, he attempted to get NBC to produce a radio series based on the stories of fellow ''Weird Tales'' author
Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury ( ; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, Horror fiction, horr ...
. Snow published five stories in ''Weird Tales'' over the space of two decades: *"Night Wings" (September 1927) *"Poison" (December 1928) *"Second Childhood" (March 1945) *"Seed" (January 1946) *"Midnight" (May 1946) With the except of "Second Childhood", these were included in a collection entitled ''Dark Music and Other Spectral Tales'' (1947) . A full description of each tale in the collection appears in the entry on Snow in E.F. Bleiler's ''Guide to Supernatural Fiction'' Snow also published several letters in the letters column of ''Weird Tales'' over the years. "Seed" was republished in the 1988 anthology ''Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies'', edited by Marvin Kaye. When Snow assembled his 1947 collection ''Dark Music'' he wanted it to include a dozen of his best stories, including one of his more sinister tales, “Midnight,” which had appeared in the May 1946 issue of ''
Weird Tales ''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, printe ...
'' alongside Bradbury's story "The Smiling People." Later, Bradbury agreed to write the foreword for the volume, but the publisher insisted on padding the volume with a number of Snow's stories that were
juvenilia Juvenilia are literary, musical or artistic works produced by authors during their youth. Written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appear as retrospective publications, some time after the author has become well known for later works. Bac ...
. Bradbury, only twenty-six years old at the time, had agreed to write a foreword for Snow's collection but reneged when he read these additions, rejecting them as "patently unpublishable". It has been rumored that the jackets for all copies of Jack Snow's book, ''Dark Music and Other Spectral Tales'', (whose cover art is by
Ronald Clyne ''Ronald Clyne'' (1925–2006) was an American designer and graphic artist. He is best known for creating over 500 covers for Folkways Records between 1948 and 1986. Early career After beginning to draw at the age of 8, Clyne sold his first dr ...
– his first published book jacket) had to be overstamped with a bar of ink, to block out Bradbury's name, but no copy has ever surfaced with such a bar of ink. Snow wrote to Bradbury "You are a literary craftsman with ambitions to become a skilled and recognized artist in the field. I have no such ambitions. I want to write because I enjoy it." A short story enttiled "A Murder in Oz" was submitted to ''
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'' is a bi-monthly American digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction, and mystery fiction. Launched in fall 1941 by Mercury Press, ''EQMM'' is named after the fic ...
'', but the editors rejected it,. It was posthumously published in '' The Baum Bugle''. That story has been published in a recent collection titled ''Spectral Snow: The Dark Fantasies of Jack Snow'' ( Hungry Tiger Press, 1996), with a cover by
Eric Shanower Eric James Shanower (born October 23, 1963) is an American cartoonist, best known for his ''List of Oz books, Oz'' novels and comics, and for the ongoing retelling of the Trojan War as ''Age of Bronze (comics), Age of Bronze''. Early life Eric S ...
. There is much overlap between Snow's two collections but each contains stories not found in the other.
Anthony Boucher William Anthony Parker White (August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968), better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher (), was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dr ...
praised ''Who's Who in Oz'' for its comprehensive set of character sketches, plot synopses, biographical notes, and "skilled discussion of many arguable points in the chronology and history of Oz". There have been rumors over the years of a third unpublished Oz book by Snow, entitled ''Over the Rainbow to Oz'' (involving either
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, the
rainbow A rainbow is an optical phenomenon caused by refraction, internal reflection and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a continuous spectrum of light appearing in the sky. The rainbow takes the form of a multicoloured circular ...
's daughter, or an early history of Oz), but no manuscript has ever been discovered. Snow's address book of Oz fans, discovered after he died, became the basis of the mailing that established The International Wizard of Oz Club. ''The Baum Bugle'' winter 1987 issue contains biographical and bibliographical information about Snow as well as critical analysis of his horror output. An entry on the movie website IMDB indicates that he died in New York of internal hemorrhaging and is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery,
Piqua, Ohio Piqua ( ) is a city in Miami County, Ohio, United States, along the Great Miami River. The population was 20,354 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located north of Dayton, Ohio, Dayton, it is part of the Greater Dayton, Dayton metro ...
(his birthplace), next to his father, John Alonzo Snow. Both father and son are buried in lot 021 001.


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External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Snow, Jack 1907 births 1956 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers American children's writers American fantasy writers American horror writers American male novelists Novelists from Ohio Oz (franchise) People from Piqua, Ohio