GaryJJSpate: Standing correction: OrganisationInfobox -> InfoboxOrganisation

2026-08-05T13:02:17Z

Standing correction: OrganisationInfobox -> InfoboxOrganisation

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:02, 5 August 2026
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	{{~~OrganisationInfobox~~		{{InfoboxOrganisation
	\|name=Fortean Society		\|name=Fortean Society
	\|type=Literary/anomaly research society		\|type=Literary/anomaly research society

GaryJJSpate at 20:53, 3 August 2026

2026-08-03T20:53:06Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:53, 3 August 2026
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	[[Category:Organisations]]		[[Category:Organisations]]
	~~[[Category:Forteana]]~~
	~~[[Category:1931 establishments]]~~
	~~[[Category:1959 disestablishments]]~~
	~~[[Category:New York]]~~

GaryJJSpate: Created page with "{{OrganisationInfobox |name=Fortean Society |type=Literary/anomaly research society |founded=1931 |founders=Friends and admirers of Charles Fort; first president Theodore Dreiser |location=New York City, USA |known_for=Promoting Charles Fort's work; publishing ''The Fortean Society Magazine'' / ''Doubt'' |status=Defunct (1959) }} The '''Fortean Society''' was a New York City-based literary and anomaly-research society, founded in 1931 to promote the work and ideas of wr..."

2026-08-02T22:44:46Z

Created page with "{{OrganisationInfobox |name=Fortean Society |type=Literary/anomaly research society |founded=1931 |founders=Friends and admirers of Charles Fort; first president Theodore Dreiser |location=New York City, USA |known_for=Promoting Charles Fort's work; publishing ''The Fortean Society Magazine'' / ''Doubt'' |status=Defunct (1959) }} The '''Fortean Society''' was a New York City-based literary and anomaly-research society, founded in 1931 to promote the work and ideas of wr..."

New page

{{OrganisationInfobox
|name=Fortean Society
|type=Literary/anomaly research society
|founded=1931
|founders=Friends and admirers of Charles Fort; first president Theodore Dreiser
|location=New York City, USA
|known_for=Promoting Charles Fort's work; publishing ''The Fortean Society Magazine'' / ''Doubt''
|status=Defunct (1959)
}}

The '''Fortean Society''' was a New York City-based literary and anomaly-research society, founded in 1931 to promote the work and ideas of writer [[Charles Fort]].<ref name="wiki-forteansociety">{{cite web |title=Fortean Society |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Society |website=Wikipedia}}</ref> It was the first organisation to formalise what would become the broader [[Forteana|Fortean]] tradition, though Fort himself was famously reluctant to endorse it during his own lifetime — see [[Charles Fort#Fort's actual position|Charles Fort § Fort's actual position]].

== Founding and membership ==
The Society was founded at a meeting held in Fort's own New York apartment, with novelist Theodore Dreiser — a close friend of Fort's since 1905, and instrumental in getting his first book published — serving as its first president.<ref name="wiki-forteansociety" /> Founding members included writer and editor Tiffany Thayer, novelist Booth Tarkington, screenwriter Ben Hecht, critic Alexander Woollcott, and writer Dorothy Parker, drawing substantially from New York's literary scene of the period.<ref name="wiki-forteansociety" /> Hecht, an early and enthusiastic admirer, had previously declared himself "the first disciple of Charles Fort" in a review of ''The Book of the Damned''.<ref name="academickids-fort">{{cite web |title=Charles Fort |url=https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Charles_Fort |website=Academic Kids}}</ref>

== Publications ==
The Society published a journal, initially titled ''The Fortean Society Magazine'' and later renamed ''Doubt'', which began publication in September 1937.<ref name="discord-fort">{{cite web |title=Charles Fort |url=https://www.discord.org/lippard/CharlesFort.html |website=discord.org}}</ref> The journal published Fort's own notes alongside contributions from other members, though under Thayer's editorship it also became a frequent outlet for his own political views, unrelated to Fort's original material.<ref name="discord-fort" />

== Leadership under Thayer and dissolution ==
Following Fort's death in 1932, Tiffany Thayer took over leadership of the Society and continued to edit its journal.<ref name="discord-fort" /> The Fortean Society effectively ceased activity following Thayer's own death in 1959.<ref name="discord-fort" /> Much of the Society's surviving material, alongside contributions from Fort, Dreiser and Hecht, was later incorporated into the International Fortean Organization (INFO); the bulk of Fort's own personal notes, however, had already been donated separately to the New York Public Library as a standalone collection.<ref name="wiki-forteansociety" />

{{VaultOrganisationBrief
|scope=New York City-based, with a national membership drawn from the American literary scene of the 1930s–1950s
|methodology=Promotion and publication of Charles Fort's work and similar anomaly reports; combined genuine Fortean material with unrelated editorial commentary under Thayer
|key_members=Charles Fort (namesake, not himself a formal member); Theodore Dreiser (first president); Tiffany Thayer (later leader and editor); Ben Hecht; Booth Tarkington; Alexander Woollcott; Dorothy Parker
|notable_case=N/A — a literary/promotional society rather than an investigative body
|successor=International Fortean Organization (INFO), in part; the broader ongoing [[Forteana|Fortean]] tradition more generally, including ''Fortean Times''
|current_status=Defunct since 1959
|legacy=The Fortean Society was the first formal organisation built around Charles Fort's work, and — despite Fort's own reluctance to endorse it — established the template later successor publications and societies would follow: a mix of genuine sceptical anomaly-collecting alongside the personal enthusiasms of whoever happened to be running it at the time.
}}

== See also ==
* [[Charles Fort]]
* [[Forteana]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Society Wikipedia — Fortean Society]

[[Category:Organisations]]
[[Category:Forteana]]
[[Category:1931 establishments]]
[[Category:1959 disestablishments]]
[[Category:New York]]

Fortean Society - Revision history

GaryJJSpate: Standing correction: OrganisationInfobox -> InfoboxOrganisation

GaryJJSpate at 20:53, 3 August 2026