A Founder of the Fortean Society—but not, in any real sense, a Fortean.
Which indicates a pattern among Founders, it would seem.
Harry Elmer Barnes was born 15 June 1889 in Auburn, New York, making him about Fort’s junior by about fifteen years. He received a Ph.D. in history from Columbia in 1918. Barnes became a respected and sought-after writer and lecturer on all manner of historical, sociological, and economic topics. He was associated with the circle of thinkers around H. L. Mencken that viewed American parochialism and obeisance to Puritan values stifling. In 1928, for example, as Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science he gave an address called “Science vs. Religion”; the next year he wrote a book called “The Twilight of Christianity” which was not a defense of atheism—he said—but was heralded by one reviewer as the most important critical appraisal of religion since Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”
That year also saw him give up a position at Smith College to become editor with the Scripps-Howard newspaper service, which he continued until 1940. He continued to write magazine articles and books at a furious pace, though, and his bibliography is immense. He was one of the leading advocates of a historical school known as the Revisionists, which critically evaluated orthodoxy—a Fortean endeavor, no? Among the conclusions he championed was that Germany was not responsible for the Great War and had been vilified by the Allies. (Including by a younger Harry Elmer Barnes, who had been pro-War in the teens.) Although Barnes was associated with Mencken and had given up academia for journalism, he was far from opposed to academic thinking.
Which indicates a pattern among Founders, it would seem.
Harry Elmer Barnes was born 15 June 1889 in Auburn, New York, making him about Fort’s junior by about fifteen years. He received a Ph.D. in history from Columbia in 1918. Barnes became a respected and sought-after writer and lecturer on all manner of historical, sociological, and economic topics. He was associated with the circle of thinkers around H. L. Mencken that viewed American parochialism and obeisance to Puritan values stifling. In 1928, for example, as Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science he gave an address called “Science vs. Religion”; the next year he wrote a book called “The Twilight of Christianity” which was not a defense of atheism—he said—but was heralded by one reviewer as the most important critical appraisal of religion since Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”
That year also saw him give up a position at Smith College to become editor with the Scripps-Howard newspaper service, which he continued until 1940. He continued to write magazine articles and books at a furious pace, though, and his bibliography is immense. He was one of the leading advocates of a historical school known as the Revisionists, which critically evaluated orthodoxy—a Fortean endeavor, no? Among the conclusions he championed was that Germany was not responsible for the Great War and had been vilified by the Allies. (Including by a younger Harry Elmer Barnes, who had been pro-War in the teens.) Although Barnes was associated with Mencken and had given up academia for journalism, he was far from opposed to academic thinking.