On 29 May 1917, Arthur Linfoot wrote that he had “read a bit of Stacpoole’s Wilderness”. He continued reading it on 30 May.
Stacpoole could be either Henry De Vere Stacpoole (1863 – 1951), a very popular and prolific Irish author best-known for his novel The Blue Lagoon (1908; adapted as films many times, most famously in 1980), or; HDVS’ eldest brother, William Henry Stacpoole (1846 – 1914), doctor of divinity, Dean of Kingstown1 school and also a published author.
No book entitled “Wilderness” appears in bibliographies of either Stacpoole although much of HDVS’ oeuvre (including The Blue Lagoon) takes wilderness as a theme, while WHS’ books are all science fiction. This may suggest that the book Arthur Linfoot was reading on this day was by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, although which of his books this was remains unclear.
The Irish coastal town of Dún Laoghaire was known as Kingstown from 1821 to 1920. ↩