Here’s your chance to own a piece of pulp history! Over the past weekend, the granddaughter of pulp author Gordon Ray Young contacted the convention’s Facebook page. Years ago, Young’s granddaughter and her mother attended an Ohio Pulpcon. They had a wonderful experience at the convention, meeting the people who were keeping the pulps alive for posterity.
Young’s family still has the author’s travel trunk that he used while traveling to Europe with his family in 1927. The trunk is rather worn, but it still bears his name. His family would like to find a good home for this piece among the people who would appreciate it the most. Therefore, they have decided to donate the trunk to PulpFest for inclusion in this year’s Saturday Night Auction.
Gordon Ray Young was the author of some of the finest adventure fiction to grace the pages of the American pulp magazines during the first half of the twentieth century. His work appeared regularly in titles such as ADVENTURE, ARGOSY, BLUE BOOK, ROMANCE, and SHORT STORIES, his fiction spanned genres as diverse as westerns, crime stories, South Seas adventure, international intrigue, historical fiction, and humor.
Young’s travel trunk has been added to our auction catalog as Auction Lot #88. Any proceeds from the sale will be donated to PulpFest. There is one stipulation: the trunk is currently in northern California. The winning bidder will be responsible for paying the costs to have the trunk shipped to its destination. These costs will be over and above the winning bid.
Below are a few photographs of the trunk. These will also be shown during the PulpFest Saturday Night Auction.
(As part of its celebration of the hardboiled dicks of the pulps, PulpFest 2017 has asked pulp scholar and historian Tom Krabacher and esteemed collector and hardboiled fiction authority Walker Martin to discuss Young’s character Don Everhard — AKA “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” They’ll examine the character’s relationship to the development and evolution of the hardboiled detective story. Young’s character was pictured twice on the cover of ADVENTURE magazine — including the May 1936 issue with cover art by Walter M. Baumhofer.)
