G. W. Reynolds publlishes "Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf"

G. Reynolds on the first page of the first printing of Reynolds's Miscellany from 1846. The text of the first installment of "Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf" begins at the bottom of the page. Public Domain.

Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf by George William MacArthur Reynolds is a gothic novel which was serialized in Reynolds Miscellany in 1846. This lycanthropy text features a marathon race and uses celestial terminology, referencing the stars, the sky, and midnight to mark the transformation of a human into a werewolf. Reynolds established midnight as the heightened moment for a werewolf's transformation. In his text, midnight is when the powers of the werewolf are at their peak, declining thereafter. These rules of the lycanthropy mythos appear throughout Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf.

Birth of Clemence Annie Housman

Cropped Image of Clemence Housman circa 1910. Wikimedia Commons

Clemence Annie Housman was born in Bromsgrove, England, on November 23, 1861. Saint Clement’s Day in the liturgical calendar marks the traditional beginning of winter. Housman was the third child and oldest girl in a family of seven children, the eldest of whom was A.E. Housman (1859-1936), the poet. Clemence was very close to the second youngest of her siblings, Laurence Housman (1865-1959), with whom she lived and worked her entire life. In addition to writing novels, Houseman was a wood engraver and an activist in the feminist movement for female suffrage. (Oakley, Inseparable Siblings)

Birth of Laurence Housman

Black and white portrait photograph of Laurence Housman, November 12, 1915. Wikimedia Commons

Laurence Housman was born on July 18, 1865 in Bromsgrove, England, the sixth of Edward and Sarah Jane Williams Housman's seven children. He was exceptionally close with his older sister Clemence Housman (1861-1955). Their eldest sibling was the poet and classical scholar A.E. Housman (1859-1936). Laurence attended art school— primarily book arts— in London with Clemence, who mastered wood engraving. His exceptional version of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1893) led to his involvement at The Bodley Head, where he designed and illustrated many books of poetry and fiction. Here, he also collaborated with Clemence, making illustrations which she would then engrave, including those for her story,The Were-Wolf, published in1896. By 1900, declining eyesight ended his illustration career, but he was also a prolific and controversial playwright. Laurence Housman lived as an outspoken suffragist, pacifist, socialist, and homosexual advocate for sexual tolerance and freedom (Oakley, Inseparable Siblings).

Clemence and Laurence Housman go to London to study art

Wood-engraved initial "P" showing wood engraver at work (Chatto and Jackson 1839)

While Laurence focused on drawing, Clemence Housman studied wood engraving at Miller’s Lane City and Guilds School in South Lambeth.  Clemence learned engraving in a segregated classroom for women taught by Charles Roberts, a skilled engraver; Roberts also taught the craft to Charles Ricketts, Charles Shannon, and T. Sturge Moore in a class for male students. It was while she was a student that Clemence invented the story of The Were-Wolf, telling it to the women in her wood-engraving class to entertain them while they worked.

Clemence Housman publishes "Wood Engraving as an Occupation for Women"

Occupations for Women Other Than Teaching, 1887, Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library

A few years into her career, Clemence Housman published an essay promoting wood engraving in a pamphlet on Occupations for Women, Other Than Teaching. The Association of Assistant Mistresses, which was formed in 1884 to support women’s rights to education, employment, and fair treatment, printed and distributed the pamphlet. Housman advised that wood engraving was not appropriate for women looking for short-term work, “but one proposing to continue it for a lifetime, will find its value and pleasures increase year after year.” Although the essay is unsigned, authorship has been attributed to Clemence Housman. (Pamphlet in Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library)

Launch of The Bodley Head

Cover Image for John Lane’s 1896 Catalogue of Publications in Belles Lettres. Yellow Nineties Online (www.1890s.ca)

The Bodley Head was originally established in 1887 under the partnership of Charles Elkin Mathews (1851-1921) and John Lane (1854–1925) as a bookshop specializing in old and rare books. The bookshop opened in London under a sign depicting the head of Sir Thomas Bodley, an English diplomat and scholar who founded the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Mathews had a passion for antique books and opened a small bookshop of his own in Exeter in 1884. Lane, on the other hand, educated himself in book collecting while living in London and supporting himself for years as a clerk at the Railway Clearing House. Their shared interest in book collecting brought them together and an ambitious Lane persuaded a hesitant Mathews to enter into a partnership with him. Lane not only convinced Mathews to move his books from Exeter to London, but also located a site for what would become The Bodley Head on Vigo Street. They called their catalogue of merchandise “A List of Books in Belles Lettres,” and focused on embodying the aestheticism of the period by specializing in decorated limited edition works of literature. (Stetz and Lasner, England in the 1890s: Literary Publishing at the Bodley Head)

Rudyard Kipling publishes "The Mark of the Beast"

Black and white photograph of Rudyard Kipling circa 1914. Wikimedia Commons.

On July 12, 1890, the Pioneer published Rudyard Kipling's "The Mark of the Beast." In India, an Englishman, Fleete, is cursed by the bite of a leper priest after he desecrates a Hindu temple. The short story describes his transformation from a man into a wolf-like creature. Kipling's text diverts from some familiar conventions of nineteenth-century werewolf fiction. Clemence Housman's The Were-Wolf and other werewolf stories often focused on werewolves as predatory villains, and usually had this threat occur in a village or town. In this story, Fleete does not kill anyone, nor is he killed at the end. Instead, he is presented as a victim that his colleagues must save (Du Coudray, The Curse of the Werewolf; Kipling, "The Mark of the Beast"). 

Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "A Pastoral Horror"

Black and white photograph of Arthur Conan Doyle, June 1, 1914. Wikimedia Commons.

On December 21, 1890, People published Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, "A Pastoral Horror." Taking place in the village of Laden in Bavaria, the story is about a masked man who commits a series of murders with a pickaxe. The identity of the killer is revealed to be the village's parish priest, Father Verhagen, who is committed to an asylum. Doyle's story is a rare example of nineteenth-century werewolf fiction that does not include supernatural elements. Verhagen does not transform into a wolf, as Clemence Housman's White Fell does in the The Were-Wolf. Instead, he remains human, but is driven to wolf-like madness by a disease (Doyle, "A Pastoral Horror;" Pugh, The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle).

End of Bodley Head Partnership Between John Lane and Charles Elkin Mathews

Front Cover of Volume 1 (April 1894) of Bodley Head's "The Yellow Book." Yellow Nineties Online (www.1890s.ca)

Charles Elkin Mathews and John Lane ended their business partnership due to a clash of personalities and philosophical differences. Lane pushed The Bodley Head beyond antiquarian bookselling and into larger scale publishing and in-house production work. He recognized and wanted to serve the needs of not only middle and upper-middle class readers, but also of the new lower middle-class readers created by the Education Act of 1870 — readers who were opinionated and adventurous, and interested in equality, social reform, and politics. Mathews’ main interests, however, continued to be poetry and essays for the upper-class and educated, so he had a hard time adjusting to the court controversies, publicity, and mass-market sales that resulted from The Bodley Head’s publications catering to new lower middle-class readers. Tensions reached a critical point when The Bodley Head began publishing The Yellow Book (1894-1897), a controversial avant-garde illustrated periodical. Just a couple of months following the publication of the first volume in 1894, Mathews and Lane ended their partnership. Lane kept the innovative and modern aspects of The Bodley Head, along with The Bodley Head premises and name, while Mathews took many of The Bodley Head poets with him to a publishing firm bearing his own name. (Nelson, The Early Nineties: A View from the Bodley Head). Laurence Housman published "The Reflected Faun" in The Yellow Book volume 1 (July 1894) and thereafter began working as a book designer and illustrator for The Bodley Head (The Yellow Nineties Online).

Clemence Housman publishes "The Were-Wolf" with The Bodley Head

Front Cover of "The Were-Wolf" Designed by Laurence Housman for 1896 Bodley Head Edition. Ryerson University Special Collections

Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf was published in book form by The Bodley Head in January of 1896. This publication allowed Housman’s story to reach audiences that it hadn’t through its 1890 publication in the Christmas number of Atalanta magazine, a periodical for young girls. The Bodley Head introduced The Were-Wolf  to New Women, aesthetes, and other book lovers who bought and appreciated John Lane’s selection of books in “belles lettres.” It was Clemence’s younger brother, Laurence Housman, who initially gave her access to The Bodley Head, as he worked for the publisher as a book designer and illustrator. Clemence’s wood engravings for The Were-Wolf, which The Bodley Head published along with her story, were after Laurence’s drawings (Kooistra, “Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf: Querying Transgression, Seeking Trans/Formation”). The edition was well-received by critics, with one reviewer describing it as “half fairy tale, half allegory, and displaying qualities of imagination and invention that are hard to seek in any other recent book of the kind that I have come across” (“Our Monthly Parcel” 92).

Ambrose Bierce publishes "The Eyes of the Panther"

Black and white photograph of Ambrose Bierce circa 1866. Wikimedia Commons.

On October 17, 1897, The San Francisco Examiner published Ambrose Bierce's "The Eyes of the Panther." In this short story, a woman named Irene Marlowe explains to her suitor that she was born shortly after her mother's traumatizing encounter with a panther. When the suitor is attacked a few nights later by a similar panther, he discovers after killing the beast that it was really Irene. Although considered a part of nineteenth century werewolf fiction, Bierce's story is a unique variant. Instead of a traditional werewolf, this text features a woman that can transform into a panther. A notable contrast to The Were-Wolf's antagonist White Fell is that Irene does not remain an animal upon her death. Instead, she reverts to her human form (Bierce, "The Eyes of the Panther;" Bierce, A Sole Survivor). 

Clemence Housman publishes The Unknown Sea

Title page from Housman's The Unknown Sea, published 1898. Open Library.

In 1898, Duckworth published Clemence Housman's second novel, The Unknown Sea. This story relates the love affair between a man named Christian and a cruel mermaid, Diadyomene. Many of the themes present in The Were-Wolf reoccur here; although the antagonist cannot transform like The Were-Wolf's White Fell she is a half-human, half-animal creature whose goal is to seduce and kill a man. Kisses are also associated with death in this text, with Diadyomene kissing Christian after she kills him. In addition, the protagonist shares his name with Christian in The Were-Wolf, and it is similarly used for religious allusions. Here, Christian's martyrdom is represented in his self-sacrifice to save Diadyomene's soul and redeem her (Housman, Unknown Sea; Sutherland, The Longman Companion).

Charles R. Ashbee founds Essex House Press

A wood engraving by Clemence Housman after Reginald Savage's design for Essex House Press. Queen's University Virtual Library.

Inspired by William Morris and the fine printing revival, Charles R. Ashbee founded the Essex House Press in 1898. Clemence Housman engraved numerous illustrations for this firm.

Closure of Atalanta

Cover of Atalanta, http://omeka-s.rula.info/s/werewolf/

Under the editorship of A. Balfour Symington and Edwin Oliver, Atalanta maintained its educational concept and incorporated Symington's Lady Victorian Magazine (1891-1892) into it. However, the number of elaborate illustrations that surrounded many of the stories and poems began to decrease after L.T. Meade's departure as editor in 1891, possibly due to increasing publication and printing costs. The amalgamation of Atalanta and Victorian Magazine seemed to be the reason behind L.T. Meade's departure. However, she conceded in the celebrity interview in 1892 that Atalanta took up plenty of her time. She left Atalanta completely in 1893. Atalanta changed its cover design in 1894 and Edwin Oliver edited the last two volumes which featured fewer distinguished writers than was customary for the publication. Atalanta shut down completely in September 1898.

James J. Guthrie Founds the Pear Tree Press

Display of five covers for Elf Magazine, published by The Pear Tree Press. Bromer Booksellers Online

Inspired by William Blake and William Morris, James J. Guthrie founded The Pear Tree Press in 1899, so that he could take production into his own hands. Clemence Housman engraved numerous illustrations for Pear Tree Press books. Placing Housman's work within "that tradition which runs through Blake and the Pre-Raphaelites," Guthrie observed in 1924 that "in technical range, no engraver has carried the art further." Her “graver release[d] from the wood whatever fine-spun, fantastic subject there may be set, apparently without effort” (“Wood Engravings of Clemence Housman”). Sixty years later, printmaker Leonard Baskin likewise hailed Clemence Housman's unique skill as an engraver, noting "that the special and entrancing qualities of The Pear Tree Press illustrations are in large measure due to Clemence's sensitive and capable hand transferring Guthrie's designs into compelling works of fine art" ("Portrait of Clemence Housman").

Laurence Housman publishes The Blue Moon, Engraved by Clemence Housman

Decorated Title Page for The Blue Moon, Engraved by Clemence Housman

The Blue Moon is the last collection of fairy tales on which Laurence Housman and his sister Clemence Housman collaborated. Laurence wrote and illustrated the tales, and Clemence engraved the images. “As proof of the extraordinary minuteness and accuracy of her engraving,’ Laurence recorded in his memoirs, “I would instance her illustrations to my book of fairy-tales called The Blue Moon” (“Materials and Notes”).

Launch of the Times Book Club

Times Book Club label from Oxford Street found in The Were-Wolf, inside back cover of copy-text source

The source-text for the COVE edition of Clemence Housman's The Were-Wolf (Bodley Head, 1896) is located in Ryerson University's Special Collections. This copy of the book includes some notable traces of its provenance. A label pasted into the inside back cover reveals that this book once belonged to a member of the Times Book Club, located at 376–384 Oxford Street in London, England. This is a rare example of archival evidence of a Victorian book club.

The brainchild of The Times newspaper's managing director, Charles Frederic Moberly Bell, and advertising manager, Horace Everett Hooper, the Times Book Club opened on September 11, 1905. The book club was designed to increase circulation for The Times newspaper by enticing subscribers with access to a wide selection of books that could be borrowed for free or bought at a signficant discount.  Although lending libraries were common throughout Britain, the Times Book Club was the first to lend books for free. Managed by Janet Hogarth (1865–1954), the book club scheme earned money for The Times through the increased number of advertisements brought in by the additional subscribers.

The Times Book Club garnered positive public reception but was less well-received by publishers, who quickly realized the negative implications for their industry. Shortly after the book club opened, an official complaint was filed by the Publishers' Association to the Booksellers' Association. After outgrowing its original premises, the Times Book Club moved to Oxford Street and promoted their new location by advertising a massive book sale on May 1, 1906. The advertisement directly addressed what had now become a "book war," with The Times encouraging readers to end "The Vicious Circle" of high book prices (Boyles 195).

At a meeting on July 4, 1906, the Publishers' Association decided to boycott The Times, withdrawing all advertisements. Subsequently, many publishers blacklisted the Times Book Club. The TImes responded by sourcing their inventory from elsewhere, and publishing articles about price-fixing in the book industry. The book war culminated with the Publishers' Association bringing Hooper to trial, beginning May 5, 1908. He lost the case, and shortly thereafter The Times hired a new manager for the book club, a new advertising manager, and a new circulation director. The Times Book Club then dwindled into obsolescence.

Clemence and Laurence Housman found the Suffrage Atelier

"What a woman may be, and yet not have the vote". This banner was produced at the Suffrage Atelier in 1912. Wikimedia Commons.

Following the formation of the Artists' Suffrage League, founded by renowned stained glass artist, Mary Lowndes, in 1907, which produced illustrated banners, postcards, and pamphlets used to promote the campaign for women's enfranchisement in Britain and North America, Clemence and Laurence Housman established their own Suffrage Atelier in 1909. Its practices took place at  artists' homes, before the Housman siblings offered the site of their small home, Pembroke Cottage in Kensington, as its headquarters. Though the location of its headquarters would change three more times within its five operational years, the collective vision of the Atelier remained the same: it was to act as an arts and crafts society which worked towards the enfranchisement of women, with an additional effort to encourage artists to forward the women's movement by means of pictorial publications. (VADS, "The Women's Library: Suffrage Banners")

In contrast with its predecessor, the Artists' Suffrage League, the Housmans' Suffrage Atelier encouraged non-professional visual artists and enthusiasts to submit their work to the cause in addition to professional artists, and also offered a small percentage of the sold works' profits as compensation. The Atelier also contrasted with its associates, the Women's Freedom League (1907-61) and the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) (1903-17), stylistically, by means of the colours its members chose to use in the creation of its feminist propaganda. While the other organizations used white, green, and purple, which are commonly known as the defining colours of the suffrage movement, the Atelier used a broader range of hues, as depicted in one of its banners (at left), wherein blue, black, and gold are used. Clemence led the team, and also lent her talents as an embroiderer, illustrator, and wood engraver to the Atelier, often spending entire days sitting on a floor cushion, doing her needlework or engraving in order to benefit the cause. Laurence designed a number of the Atelier's banners.

As Clemence Housman was a respected member of the WSPU, much of the Atelier's work could be found for purchase within its store chains and also within the pages of its national newspaper. The Atelier held printmaking workshops and competitions in addition to the numerous exhibitions, political rallies and processions its members would regularly attend and circulate their artwork at, while also allowing for new and meaningful relationships to be forged between women as they worked collaboratively to aid a feminist cause which married the artistic with the political. The feminist nature of the workshop's artistic operations also subverted the common belief that embroidery and needlework reinforced women's domestic place within the home. The Suffrage Atelier ran from 1909-14. (Morton, "Changing Spaces: Art, Politics, and Identity in the Home Studios of the Suffrage Atelier")

Clemence Housman imprisoned for tax resistance

Laurence Housman escorts his sister Clemence Housman to Holloway Prison for her arrest, 29 September 2011. Wikimedia Commons.

On Friday, September 29th, 1911, Clemence Housman was arrested for purposefully resisting the payment of taxes. This action was born out of her active participation and creative leadership within suffrage movements. Both Clemence and Laurence, who lived in Kensington, were geographically central to the suffrage movements, and loaned their creative skills to the Women’s Freedom League, through their efforts at their Suffrage Atelier. Clemence, with her considerable sewing skills, was the “chief banner-maker of the suffrage movement,” and collaborated with Laurence on the famous banner bearing the slogan “From Prison to Citizenship.”

Clemence’s own tax resistance was part of a larger movement of the Women’s Tax Resistance League (WTRL), which used strategies of civil disobedience to campaign for women’s suffrage. Clemence, who lived with her brother, did not legally have any property on which to pay taxes, so she rented out a house in the rural community of Swanage, where she eluded the census of 2 April 1911. An entry in her diary at this time was “No Vote No Census Clemence Housman.” Along with other WTRL members, Clemence refused to pay taxes on her rental property in 1911, and was admonished in a government letter in July, to which she replied that she was on holiday and unable to pay taxes. Finally, on September 29th, the tax authorities caught up with her, and she was arrested from her Kensington house. The suffrage community gathered at her house to show support, and Laurence himself escorted her to Holloway Prison. Immediately after her incarceration, Clemence petitioned the home office explaining her reason for alluding taxes, that she felt that she had “personally fulfilled a duty, moral, social and constitutional, by refusing to pay petty taxes into irresponsible hands.” At this time, Laurence commented to the press: "when they give her her freedom, she will do it again until representation has been granted." Clemence was released from Holloway quietly on 6 October, an event that attracted considerable press because of the position of her and her family within the artistic and suffrage communities. A special cable to the New York Times called Clemence a "Suffragette Martyr" (Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote; "Suffragette Martyr," The New York Times).

Clemence Housman Completes her Last Wood-Engraving Commission

Chipping Campden Engraving, Pinterest

Clemence Housman began engraving Frederick Landseer Griggs's architectural drawings of Chipping Campden during World War I and continued the series until 1923, after which she retired from wood engraving.

Clemence and Laurence Housman collaborate on “The Were-Wolf,” a film script for a silent movie

The first page of the hand-written film script to Clemence Housman's "The Were-Wolf", courtesy of the Bryn Mawr Special Collections.

Once Clemence and Laurence Housman retired in 1924 to the village of Street, in Somerset, where they had established Longmeadow House. Here they collaborated on a film script based on Clemence’s Were-Wolf story (Kooistra, “Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf: Querying Transgression, Seeking Trans/Formation"). After all, The Were-Wolf existed in print and in illustrations, why didn’t it also deserve to be part of this new artistic medium?

Adapted for silent films, as “talkies" were only beginning to be commercially possible in the mid- to late-1920s, the script version of The Were-Wolf is even more bleak than the original tale. In the Foreword, written in Laurence’s hand, the siblings describe the appearance of the werewolf in “the folk-lore of France, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, French Canada,” and other places. The Housmans describe how the film could take place in “the colour and atmosphere of Scandinavian life, but the scenes might actually well be laid in the rural districts of French Canada." The film plot differs slightly from the original story with the introduction of Marta, an established and known lover of Sweyn, whose happiness with him is upset when White Fell appears. Marta balances the scales to offer a young, domestic female figure where before there was only the threat of White Fell and her power. But the same darkness sets over the characters as in Housman’s original tale, and in a gruesome turn, Marta and Sweyn are reunited over Christian’s dead body (Housman script, Bryn Mawr Special Collections).

"Werewolf of London" (1935)

Promotional poster for “Werewolf of London.” IMDb.

Debuting in 1935, Werewolf of London is a horror film directed by Stuart Walker, and starring Henry Hull as Wilfred Glendon, the titular werewolf. Dr. Glendon is a wealthy and respected English botanist who is bitten while on an expedition to retrieve the mariphasa lupina lumina in Tibet. Although the plant staves off the effects of lycanthropy, Dr. Glendon is still driven to attack people. Several hunts occur, a second werewolf is revealed, Scotland Yard gets involved, and love is threatened by all before the credits roll (“Werewolf of London”).

This is the first film to successfully create what is considered the werewolf “look”: a horrific wolf-human hybrid, rather than someone who transforms from human to wolf.

"She-Wolf of London" (1946)

Promotional poster for “She-Wolf of London." IMDb.

She-Wolf of London (alternatively titled Curse of the Allenbys) was released in 1946, directed by Jean Yarbrough and starred June Lockhart and Don Porter, and is another crack at the female werewolf story from the angle of mystery rather than horror.

With a title evoking Werewolf of London (1935), the plot concerns Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart), a young and beautiful woman set to be married to her barrister fiancé (Don Porter). She lives alongside her aunt Martha, cousin Carol, and servant Hannah, Phyllis becomes convinced that she is under the “curse of the Allenbys” as Scotland Yard detectives suspect a “wolf-woman” of being the murderess of several victims whose throats were torn out, and who was seen prowling near Allenby Mansion.