It was Bob Weinberg’s idea in the first place. I discussed the project with April Derleth since her father had published two volumes of Whitehead’s fiction in the 1940’s — Jumbee and West India Lights. April agreed and I borrowed the Arkham archival copies of the two books in dustjacket. plan to the art work from the two Arkham editions and add a third volume containing other uncollected stories from the pulps. One story “The People of Pan” that was already collected merited a Weird Tales cover, and that story will be published in the third volume.
Right in the middle of this project I learned that Christopher and Barbara Roden of Ash Tree Press were also publishing the same project in three volumes, and the first volume had already been released. The stories were already in the public domain when Derleth published them, so there was no question of infringing any copyrights.
I telephoned Christopher to advise him that I was proceeding with the same project, and continued to collect the stories. The majority were from Weird Tales and many had been published in various anthologies over the past twenty years. I did not want to abandon this project especially since Arkham House had published the two volumes already, and both had been out of print for years
Before I can project I still have to find three of the stories, and one correspondent has advised there may be some more htat don’t have bibliographic data available which makes them even more difficult to locate. I append the list below, if anyone can assist I would be most grateful.
Want List for Whitehead
1. The Gladstone Bag, (ss) Black Mask Sep 1925
2. Gahd Laff!, (ss) Black Mask Jun 1926
3. The Return of Milt Drennan, (ss) Mystery Stories Jan 1929
4. The Great Circle, (ss) Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror Jun 1932; Bizarre Fantasy Tales Fll 1970
5. Ruby the Kid, (ss) Nickel Western Apr 1933
6 Litrachoor, (pm) The Writer; Omniumgathum, ed. Jonathan Bacon & Steve Troyanovich, Stygian Isle Press 1976;
The Writer Etchings & Odysseys #6 1985
