Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned (1919) — The Public Domain Review

Albany, New York, 6 August 1874. Charles Hoy Fort was born into a prosperous family and difficult circumstances. His mother, Agnes Hoy, died before he was five, leaving Toddy, as he was called, and his two younger brothers to the widowed Charles Nelson Fort. The paternal Fort was strict, physically abusive, bringing tears to Toddy’s eyes, blood to his nose — a tyrannical figure who cowed his sons into compliance but not respect or love. Impish from an early age, Fort developed an independent streak, perhaps in reaction to his father’s despotism, an intransigence that matured into a skepticism toward all forms of authority. He rejected religion — and what was taught at school. A compulsion to collect overcame him when he was young, another trait that would organize his adulthood, collecting and contumacy. Fort dropped out of high school, moved to Brooklyn, where, as he had at home, he worked as a journalist. In 1893, he used a small inheritance to travel, covering thirty thousand miles in three years. “All this to accumulate an experience and knowledge of life.” In 1896, illness forced his return to Brooklyn. He got reacquainted with Annie Filing, whom he’d known in Albany. She nursed him back to health. They married in October. The couple struggled to eke out a living, Annie becoming a laundress, Fort a dishwasher.