by Gary Romeo
I came across this letter from the publishers of The Fifth Book of Junior Authors & Illustrators requesting a short biography from L. Sprague de Camp for his inclusion in this forthcoming book. I once had a copy of More Junior Authors (1963) and remembered that Robert Heinlein had a nice write-up in that volume. I looked forward to seeing Sprague’s entry in this edition.
Fully expecting to see Sprague’s inclusion in this Fifth book, I ordered an inexpensive copy from Abebooks. (The copy on Amazon was a costly $95, it pays to shop around!) A few days later I received the book and was hugely disappointed when the entry did not appear. (Later I learned the book was available free online, it pays to search around!)
Luckily, I do have a copy of the two-page short biography that Sprague prepared for this book. Why he was not included in the final product is not a big puzzle. Sprague (other than a few of his non-fiction science books and one SF anthology) did not really often write for “juniors.” His science-fiction and fantasy books (by himself or with Flecther Pratt, Robert E. Howard, and Lin Carter) often have sexual scenes and almost always have violence. While adolescents read those (I sure did) they are NOT placed in the Juvenile or Young Adult section of the bookstore. Below is de Camp’s self-written short biography. It is interesting what he has chosen to highlight. (I believe he made a mistake in not emphasizing specific books that could be considered juvenile related. Mentioning his work with Golden Press, the Darwin biography (co-written with Catherine Crook de Camp), and Tales Beyond Time (a SF anthology geared toward young readers) all certainly deserved to be brought up in this instance.
For those who wish to know how the entries that made the final cut look in print, I’m reproducing the Robert Heinlein entry from More Junior Authors and the Isaac Asimov entry from the Third Book of Junior Authors:
spraguedecampfan 
De Camp’s brief self-bio reads much like all his other brief self-bios I have seen. I suspect he just wrote one and then used or adapted it in all other circumstances in which one was called for, on the philosophy of “waste not, want not.” Wondering if this one was the original instance. A pty it wasn’t used, especially since the letter of solicitation essentiall promised him a place in the book. I note that he did mention his non-fiction juveniles in passing; perhaps he should have given them a more prominant place and extensive discussion. Oh, well. Whether he was considered a juvenile author or not, he was read by this juvenile, back when I was one, and has been revisited extensively since.
I’m not sure what their criteria was. Heinlein and Asimov did SPECIFICALLY write fiction for juveniles, de Camp didn’t. We talked about this before, but I think de Camp made a mistake when he added back that “sex scene” that was cut from the first appearance of LEST DARKNESS FALL in Unknown magazine. It could’ve been a YA classic without that. But I suppose at the time, being a book for adults was better sales-wise.