Rob Hansen writes:
3rd January 2012 is the 75th anniversary of the first SF convention, held in Leeds in 1937. A few months back I was put in touch with Jill Godfrey, daughter of Harold Gottliffe. It was Gottliffe who took photos of the event and not only did Jill have better prints of some of these than had come down the years, she also had several that were unknown to us.
I’ve been holding these back so as to premiere them on the anniversary. If you go to those pages on my website now you’ll see these, including a photo of the young Arthur C. Clarke that has never been seen before: www.fiawol.org.uk/fanstuff/THEN%20Archive/1937con.htm.
Along with the recently unearthed report by Ted Carnell (link also included) that’s more new material on that historic convention than has turned up in years.
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I’ve just added Forry Ackerman’s report on the 1957 Worldcon to that section of my website. I’ve incorporated several paragraphs in the composite report, but Forry’s full, unedited report can be found here: www.fiawol.org.uk/fanstuff/THEN%20Archive/1957Worldcon/4sj01.htm.
Titled “Wings Over The Worldcon”, this is from the March 1958 issue of Imaginative Tales (Vol 5 #2), as found and supplied to me by Mark Plummer.
I’ve split the report over three pages. The first of these is a flight of whimsy by Ackerman. The non-whimsical, straight reportage begins on the second page.