J. Vernon Shea (1912–1981)

oseph Vernon Shea (1912–1981) was an American author of horror, fantasy, poetry, and essays; and a correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and August Derleth.

Shea was born in Dayton, Kentucky, the son of a professional magician. According to an obituary published in a 1981 issue of Crispin Burnham's Eldritch Tales, Shea's father had been a friend of such famous tage magicians as Thurston, Hermann the Great, Houdini and Blackstone.

He began writing fiction and poetry around the age of 13. His letters to Weird Tales magazine also appeared in print from around that time. At the age of 19, in 1931, Shea sent some of his early efforts to H.P. Lovecraft for criticism. Shea at that time resided in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and apparently entered the University of Pittsburgh, but had to drop out after a year because of financial considerations. The correspondence lasted from 1931-37. Lovecraft's side of the correspondence has now been published in full in S. T. Joshi and David E. Schulz, eds. H. P. Lovecraft: Letters to J. Vernon Shea, Carl F. Strauch, and Lee McBride White. NY: Hippocampus Press, 2016 , pp. 15-295.

Shea later served overseas in the Army Medical Corps, then returned to civilian life and worked as a metallurgist in Cleveland, Ohio. In the 1960s he donated what he believed to be all his letters from Lovecraft to the John Hay Library, but ten more letters were later found amongst his effects.

He was a long-time member of the "Esoteric Order of Dagon" Amateur Press Association at the time of his sudden accidental death. In the last five years of his life, from 1977, Shea contributed 20 issues of his own quarterly zine Outre to the Esoteric Order of Dagaon a.p.a., contgributing, in all, 1248 pages. This totals more pages than anyone else had eve contributed to ther a.p.a. , and Shea did not join the a.p.a. until its Mailing #13. Some of this material was gathered in a small-press booklet, In Search of Lovecraft (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1991).

Shea died unexpectedly in early 1981 at the Cleveland apartment where he lived alone.