THE FIRST CONVENTION (1937)
In January 1937, the Leeds chapter of the Science Fiction League brought something new into the world: the first ever SF convention. (A counter claim is made for an earlier visit of New York fans to meet Philadelphia fans at the home of one of their number, but this is hard to take seriously - see THE FIRST EVER CONVENTION, link below.) At a time when travelling any distance was much more difficult than it is today, several of those attending travelled hundreds of miles to be there. Held at Leeds' Theosophical Hall, the main order of business was setting up the Science Fiction Association, the UK's first national SF organisation. After the convention - or conference, as they called it - a souvenir report was issued, and this has now been added to this site: Early convention literature did not contain a list of those who attended, unfortunately. The list below was assembled from those mentioned in the souvenir booklet. How many attended in total is a bit of a mystery. As Sam Moskowitz explained:
"Although the conference's OFFICIAL SOUVENIR REPORT claimed an attendance of 'about twenty', Eric Frank Russell, who had been there, stated there were thirteen, and an extant photograph of the group shows only eleven. The report names fourteen...." See list of those 14 known attendees below.
Known attendees: Apart from the headshots above, all photos in these pages were actually taken at the convention. The remainder of these can be seen here. The quality is not all we might wish, but these are the prints that have come down the years to us. Most of these are courtesy of Peter Weston, who has been tireless in hunting them down. My thanks to him and to whoever the original photographers were.
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