On this day in Alabama history: Mary Counselman had a hit

Aug. 6, 1934

Mary Elizabeth Counselman (1911-95) wrote short stories and poems that were published in Good Housekeeping, Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post, which were among the most popular magazines in America. Some of her best-known stories are 30 horror and fantasy tales published in Weird Tales pulp fiction magazine. She attended Alabama College and the University of Alabama before becoming a reporter for The Birmingham News. She taught creative writing at Gadsden State Community College, but she became best known for her four-decade association with Weird Tales and the August 1934 publication of “The Three Marked Pennies.” Counselman had written the story when she was 15, and its publication years later created a sensation with Weird Tales readers and was reprinted in nine languages. It was adapted for the ABC radio program “General Electric Theater” in the early 1950s and included as an example of outstanding writing in a high school textbook in the 1960s.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

“Half in Shadow: A Collection of Tales for the Night Hours” was the first collection of short stories published by Alabama horror author Mary Counselman. Produced in the United Kingdom in 1964, it features many of her most popular stories, including the widely reproduced “The Three Marked Pennies,” which she wrote in 1926 at the age of 15. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Alabama horror author Mary Counselman’s short story “The Black Stone Statue” first appeared in Weird Tales in December 1932. A story of a creature that turns everything it touches to stone, it is unusual for being told in the form of a suicide note by the main character, a sculptor. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.