Henneberger, J[acob] C[lark]

   (1890–1969)

   Magazine publisher who, with J.M.Lansinger, founded Rural Publications, Inc., in 1922, to publish a variety of popular magazines. Henneberger achieved great success with the magazine College Humor (begun in 1922), and now envisioned founding a line of varied periodicals in the detective and horror fields. Having received assurances from such established writers as Hamlin Garland and Ben Hecht that they would be willing to contribute stories of an “unconventional” sort to a new magazine, Henneberger started WTin March 1923; but in the end these and other wellknown authors did not submit to the magazine, leaving its early issues open to many tyros and amateurs. Henneberger installed Edwin Baird as his first editor, and the latter accepted all five of the stories HPL submitted to him in May 1923. Henneberger commissioned HPL to ghostwrite “Under the Pyramids” for Harry Houdini, paying him $100 upon receipt of the manuscript in early March 1924. By this time, however, the magazine was in serious financial trouble; it and its companion, Detective Tales,were now $40,000 in debt. For this and other reasons, HPL turned down Henneberger’s offer to be the new editor of the magazine; specifically, HPL, newly married and settled in Brooklyn, did not wish to pull up stakes and move to Chicago to edit the magazine, as would have been required. Henneberger then sold off his share of Detective Talesto Lansinger, appointed Farnsworth Wright as editor of WT, and came to an agreement with B. Cornelius, the printer of the magazine, whereby Cornelius would be the chief stockholder with an agreement that if the $40,000 owed him was ever repaid by profits from the magazine, the stock would be returned to Henneberger. This never happened. In the fall of 1924 Henneberger provisionally hired HPL to edit a new humor magazine that he was planning (possibly titled the Magazine of Fun) at $40 per week; HPL spent the next several weeks preparing jokes for the magazine, but it never got off the ground. Henneberger gave HPL a credit of $60 at the Scribner Book Shop; although HPL attempted to have the credit converted to cash, he was unable to do so, and so he and Frank Belknap Long selected a large number of books (see SL1.355–56). Henneberger sporadically communicated with HPL over the next few years, but to no particular effect. See Henneberger’s late memoir, “Out of Space, Out of Time,” Deeper Than You Think1, No. 2 (July 1968): 3–5.