George Hugh Banning — Found in a Derelict
George Hugh Banning—grandson of Los Angeles transportation pioneer Phineas Banning—moved through maritime, military, literary, and scientific worlds that have rarely been understood as one career. As a young man he shipped before the mast; while studying at Berkeley he published sea poems in the Los Angeles Graphic; during the First World War he served as a lieutenant in the United States aviation corps. His only known poetry collection, Found in a Derelict, joined sea ballads, war poems, romance, fantasy, humor, and California landscape writing in an art book illustrated by Loren Roberta Barton, with design work by Wayland Smith, Dhan Gopal Mukerji, and Perham Wilhelm Nahl. Banning later wrote pulp sea fiction, traveled the Pacific coast of Mexico with Captain G. Allan Hancock, helped preserve his family’s stagecoach history in Six Horses, and prepared the general report of Hancock’s Galápagos expedition. This edition presents the complete 1919 collection, adds the four poems located in their 1916 periodical appearances, records substantive revisions, and documents the book’s collaborative visual history.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Bibliography
Banning, George Hugh. “My Song,” “Off the Reef,” and “The Flying Merman.” Los Angeles Graphic, 22 Jan. 1916, p. 4.
———. “The Calm.” Los Angeles Graphic, 18 Mar. 1916, p. 4. Revised and retitled “Becalmed” in Found in a Derelict.
———. Found in a Derelict: “Queen of the Night” and Other Poems. Aristo Company, 1919. Printed by Murrell Printing Company. Illustrations by Loren Roberta Barton; decorative lettering by Wayland Smith; binding design by Dhan Gopal Mukerji; cover design by Perham Wilhelm Nahl.
———. “Spunyarn.” Part 1. The Popular Magazine, vol. 63, no. 1, 7 Feb. 1922, p. 84–.
———. “Spunyarn.” Part 2. The Popular Magazine, vol. 63, no. 2, 20 Feb. 1922, p. 105–.
———. “Spunyarn.” Part 3. The Popular Magazine, vol. 63, no. 3, 7 Mar. 1922, p. 96–.
———. “Spunyarn.” Part 4. The Popular Magazine, vol. 63, no. 4, 20 Mar. 1922, p. 138–.
———. “Sea Wrought.” Complete novel. The Popular Magazine, 7 Sept. 1923.
———. In Mexican Waters. Charles E. Lauriat Company, 1925. London ed., Martin Hopkinson, 1925. 196 pp. Dedicated to Captain G. Allan Hancock.
———. “In Mexican Waters.” Illustrated extract or feature. Illustrated London News, 11 Apr. 1925, p. 636.
———. Im Zauber mexikanischer Gewässer. Translated by G. M. R. Pickmers. F. A. Brockhaus, 1926. 261 pp.; 69 illustrations and map. German translation of In Mexican Waters. The translator credit is identified in a contemporary 1927 German library review; confirmation against the book’s title page remains desirable.
———. Hancock Expedition to the Galápagos Islands, 1933: General Report. Bulletin of the Zoological Society of San Diego, no. 10. Zoological Society of San Diego, May 1933. 30 pp.
———. Found in a Derelict. A Critical Reading Edition. Edited by Brian Kim Stefans. The Text-Tech Papers, 2026.
Banning, William, and George Hugh Banning. “Wheel Tracks of the ‘Jackass Mail’: A Chronicle of the Perils and Problems of the First Transcontinental Stage Line.” Touring Topics, vol. 21, no. 11, Nov. 1929, pp. 21–25.
Banning, George Hugh, and William Banning. Six Horses. Foreword by Frederick Russell Burnham. Century Company, 1930. xx, 410 pp.; plates and index. LCCN 30009516.