Talk:William Hope Hodgson

Older Comments
I've made some corrections to the list of Works. Whoever did it, had everything italicised, which means everything is a novel or book, which is incorrect. Hodgson only wrote 4 novels. The rest are short stories or collections. The Derelict is a short story, yet this person setup a future connection as "The Derelict (Novel)".

Last Edit / Overhaul
The last edit done was to add a link to an article written by another key fantastic horror / speculative fiction author in appreciation of Hodgson.

Over time, I hope to overhaul this article to insert more information about Hodgson's life, work and influence.


 * You know I wish people would sign and date entries such as these. I don't know whether this was written yesterday or 5 years ago, or if the author is STILL going to do what he said, has already done it, or been run over by a bus. Myles325a (talk) 07:01, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The link for Online editions
The link for Online editions wasn't dead but it was reverting to a main index page for authors. I traced the link for WHH and replaced the old address with the new, correct one.

New Link, plus typo correction
I've added a link for a Dr. Prune's Apothecary and corrected a typo on Nigh[t]shade Books.

Link to Bibliography
I've also added a link to a bibliography at Andy Robertson's Night Land site.

"Failed body builder"?
I admit I'm not an authority on Hodgson's life but was it his body building or the gymnasium he was running that failed? I believe it was the business that didn't succeed. Without objection, I'll alter the line to reflect that.

Going back over it, I noticed that the bodybuilding was mentioned again in the second paragraph, so I dropped the line in the first altogether. Nothing is lost.

Hodgson-Houdini controversy
I've added a link to a story that describes Hodgson's challenge to Houdini.

Place/Date of Birth
Added.

"classic of the first water" citation
Added.Hodgson 15:05, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

"most potent" citation
Added, but the phrase was modified to be an exact quote--"most potent" rather than "most powerful", etc. Although I'm not sure both these quotations from Lovecraft need citations since they come from the same essay.Hodgson 15:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Expanding & re-organizing
I have been adding works and expanding on Hodgson's use of genre, and broken out his stories by recurring characters, which are getting separate pages, and to mention a few more of his notable standalone stories. I would like to expand the biography a bit, and plan to add some information on his poems, a number of which were recently published for the first time, and references to the recent "Lost Poetry" and "Wandering Soul" books. Paul R. Potts 15:33, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Needs more biographical information
I've done just about all I can with the works section but the biography is pretty weak. Can anyone expand it, especially if you have access to the biographical essays in the Moskowitz collections? (Please cite them, of course, if you use information from these essays)... Paul R. Potts 23:22, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Derelict, Eloi, Story List
I have added to the list of standalone stories most of the stories from the 5-volume Collected Fiction. These don't have dates or alternate titles yet and are not ordered yet. I have also contributed summaries of Eloi, Eloi and The Derelict. It is not my intention to provide summaries of every story (many of them are little known and don't especially stand out) but if any editor wants to highlight a particularly well-regarded or important story please feel free to either provide a page for the story or request it and I'll see what I can do. Paul R. Potts 20:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Removing Motifs
The motifs section is not turning well, so I'm removing it, possibly to add it back in a different form later. Paul R. Potts 16:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikification and original research
It seems to me that this page is in dire need of Wikifying. Especially the sections on Genre and Theme in Hodgson's works seem to fit the bill of original research. This shouldn't be a collection of essays but an encyclopedia article. Elrith 05:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Removed Genre and Theme Sections
I (Paul R. Potts) (the author of the Genre and Theme sections) have removed them entirely. I would still like to find some text I can cite about genre in Hodgson's work since his genre-crossing is one of his most interesting characteristics as a writer. I will see what I can come up with from the Moskowitz essays.

This entry could still use a photo.

The biography needs some moderate expansion.

If you have access to his stories and would like to contribute, the following stories could use your assistance:

- The Sargasso Sea stories need to be completed

- The Capt. Gault stories could use slightly expanded summaries.

I'm happy with Jat/Cargunka story summaries although editing is always welcome.

- On the Carnacki page, "The Hog" needs expansion.

- Also on the Carnacki page, "The Ghost Pirates" needs a plot summary, even a short one.

- The rest of the 427 Cheyne Walk stories could use brief summaries.

- On the page for The Night Land, there needs to be a section on "The Dream of X," publication information and how it differs from the original novel (or, make this a separate page and link it in appropriately).

Biography
Paul R. Potts 00:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC): I have expanded the biographical section to about the level of detail that I think is appropriate. Almost all of this information comes from Sam Moskowitz's essay "William Hope Hodgson," which is taken from the first edition of the Out of the Storm: Uncollected Fantasies story collection from 1975.

I could use help with:

- Fact checking. Moskowitz often scrambles dates and there are a lot of typos in his essay. He also freely wanders backwards and forwards chronologically. So he is slightly dubious to use as a source, although there isn't very much else that is readily available!

- Citing this work properly to Wikipedia standards.

- Adding and/or integrating _other_ biographical sources besides this one essay.
 * Could you at least take the trouble to format your edits properly, italicizing the titles of novels and magazines, for instance. It's rather presumptuous to expect other folk to do these things for you. Deor 01:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Paul R. Potts 01:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC) Deor: I'm working on it. I am not trying to be "presumptuous" -- it is simply unfinished.

Paul R. Potts: Deor: I have done this and linked in the short stories and added more intra-wikipedia links.

Paul R. Potts 19:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC) I have access to another source, the "Wandering Soul" book and will use this to flesh out the biography a little bit more. I have some notes made, so will work on this as soon as I get a chance... also, there is a particular photo in that book which I would like to scan for the Hodgson article. There are various photos floating around that might be suitable but I think this one is the best -- it shows Hodgson full-face, and is clearer and more detailed than most of the others. He is also showing off his muscles; it was a promotional pic for his bodybuilding business. It should be free of copyright concerns, I believe -- am I wrong? -- but I lack a scanner. I will try and find someone to scan it for me.


 * I seem to recall a photo of Hodgson previously appearing in this article -- a head shot in profile. Was it deleted at some point?  This is the most frequently reprinted photo of him; I've seen it in a number of sources.  The entry for Hodgson in Wikisource/authors has it as well. Z Wylld 20:46, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

"a career cut short at age 40"
Is this really worth including? After all 40 was about the average life expectancy in this time period. Claidheamohmor (talk) 08:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Paul R. Potts (talk) 03:34, 7 January 2008 (UTC)Of course, it is difficult and a bit pointless to speculate about how much longer he might have lived and how much he would have written. Average life expectancies only apply to populations and don't necessarily imply that a given individual would live to a certain age. Given Hodgson's well-documented obsession with fitness and his prolific output as a writer personally I imagine the answers to be "at least another ten years" and "a lot," but I'm just playing "what if."

I guess your objection is that we can't know whether his life and career were "cut short" or just "ended?"

Makes sense, so I have changed the biographical summary to remove the "cut short" wording, although I personally would think of every victim of WWI as having a life "cut short..."

Copyright
This article has 2 lines that I have a problem with. "Some of Hodgson's poems were first published in 2005, when they appeared in The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson. Some may be still under copyright protection." "Copyright protection has now expired on most of Hodgson's work, with the exception of some of the works published posthumously, including many of his poems." http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm The copyright for unpublished works is Life plus 70, which is also the maximum otherwise. So as WHH has been dead for about 93 years, all of his works, published or unpublished, fell into the Public Domain 23 years ago or before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.36.118.195 (talk) 02:55, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have now added a request for a source for the statement that some work are still under copyright. --Bensin (talk) 06:40, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The Cornell Copyright Chart you linked to says that works published 1923-1977 have a 95 year copyright terms in the US, and Hodgson works first published 1977-2002 are under copyright until 2047. And copyright laws vary around the world; in much of Europe, there's a 25 year effective copyright on recently first published public domain works.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:34, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

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Wife's name and date of death
'Spouse Betty Farnworth (m. 1913; died 1918)'

'Bessie Hodgson died in 1943'

Which? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.240.173 (talk) 01:45, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Clearer now? They were married in 1813, he died in 1918 (which obviously ended the marriage), and she survived until 1943. Deor (talk) 03:06, 29 November 2018 (UTC)