Now I start to wonder about Tiffany Thayer’s list of regional correspondents in the first issue of Doubt: how accurate was it? Were the correspondents just people he had once written? Was he even in contact with all of them?
The reason for the questions? Maximilian Rudwin.
Rudwin was an interesting character--Fortean in that sense, if no other. Just recently, Douglas A. Anderson wrote up a piece on him.
Born in Russia Joseph Maccabee Rubin, he emigrated to the US, changed his name, and took degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University, and Columbia University (two Ph.D.s!). Rudwin is most known for his work on European folktales and stories about the devil. Anderson writes,
“Rudwin was a pioneering scholar of the fantastic, and his best work deserves to be read and remembered ....
The Devil in Legend and Literature ... is one of those classic works of romantic scholarship which is entitled to sit on the bookshelf alongside of Clark B. Firestone’s The Coasts of Illusion (1924), John Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu (1927), and Odell Shepard’s The Lore of the Unicorn (1930), among many others. Rudwin approaches the lore of the Devil from many sides and many cultures, covering belief in the Devil, the names and forms of various Devils, the legend of Lilith, the Devil-compact in tradition as well as in literature, and the Devil in literature and poetry. Illustrations by Dührer, Doré, William Blake and others complement the text. Rudwin’s book is well-documented, with an unusually thorough thirty-five page analytical index which makes it very useful for reference.”
LIkely, Rudwin died in 1946, which may account for his vanishing from the pages of Doubt.
But, there’s also an odd discrepancy.
Rudwin moved very often, and seemingly Thayer could not keep up. In Doubt, Thayer said Rudwin was at the University of Wyoming. That was 1937. But, he had left Laramie by the early 1930s and at the time of Thayer’s writing was in New York.
Maybe it was juts a mistake on Thayer’s part. But the discrepancy also raises the possibility that Thayer was bolstering the Fortean Society’s membership rolls with people he had--at the very least--lost contact with.
Nonetheless, it does seem likely that Rudwin had at some point expressed an interest in Fort and Forteanism.
The reason for the questions? Maximilian Rudwin.
Rudwin was an interesting character--Fortean in that sense, if no other. Just recently, Douglas A. Anderson wrote up a piece on him.
Born in Russia Joseph Maccabee Rubin, he emigrated to the US, changed his name, and took degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University, and Columbia University (two Ph.D.s!). Rudwin is most known for his work on European folktales and stories about the devil. Anderson writes,
“Rudwin was a pioneering scholar of the fantastic, and his best work deserves to be read and remembered ....
The Devil in Legend and Literature ... is one of those classic works of romantic scholarship which is entitled to sit on the bookshelf alongside of Clark B. Firestone’s The Coasts of Illusion (1924), John Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu (1927), and Odell Shepard’s The Lore of the Unicorn (1930), among many others. Rudwin approaches the lore of the Devil from many sides and many cultures, covering belief in the Devil, the names and forms of various Devils, the legend of Lilith, the Devil-compact in tradition as well as in literature, and the Devil in literature and poetry. Illustrations by Dührer, Doré, William Blake and others complement the text. Rudwin’s book is well-documented, with an unusually thorough thirty-five page analytical index which makes it very useful for reference.”
LIkely, Rudwin died in 1946, which may account for his vanishing from the pages of Doubt.
But, there’s also an odd discrepancy.
Rudwin moved very often, and seemingly Thayer could not keep up. In Doubt, Thayer said Rudwin was at the University of Wyoming. That was 1937. But, he had left Laramie by the early 1930s and at the time of Thayer’s writing was in New York.
Maybe it was juts a mistake on Thayer’s part. But the discrepancy also raises the possibility that Thayer was bolstering the Fortean Society’s membership rolls with people he had--at the very least--lost contact with.
Nonetheless, it does seem likely that Rudwin had at some point expressed an interest in Fort and Forteanism.
