Goodbye, Great Age of Print and Fare Well, Herbert Allingham by Julia Jones
Last night I picked the final piece of paper from my newly emptied attic floor and placed it in Box 16 of 22 (labelled Amalgamated Press serials 1931-1935, print and manuscript, since you ask). I turned the page and this was how the story began. WOMEN WORSHIPPED HIM! MEN ADMIRED AND ENVIED HIM! WHO WAS THIS HANDSOME STRANGER WHO CAPTURED ALL HEARTS? Well, the answer to that question was not Herbert Allingham – the author of The Spell of a Rogue and about 300 other magazine serial stories. The issue of The Oracle that I was packing away was published in March 1934 when Allingham was approaching the end of his fifty year working life. Less than two years later Allingham would be dead but neither The Oracle nor any of the other cheap papers would mention the fact – let alone pay tribute to his lifetime of work. The first instalment of Allingham's first serial story had been published in 1886, the last would be completed posthumously in 1937. Allingham...