Lee Hawkins Garby was the co-author with Edward Elmer Smith of the 1928 serial novelThe Skylark of Space, the first science fiction story in which humans left the solar system. She was the wife of Dr. Carl DeWitt Garby, a friend of Dr. Smith's from college at the University of Idaho. The novel was first published as a book in 1946, as The Skylark of Space: The Tale of the First Inter-Stellar Cruise, naming Garby and Smith on the title page but Smith alone on the cover —with frontispiece by Charles Schneeman. The Library of Congress catalogs it as "by Edward E. Smith, in collaboration with Mrs. Lee Hawkins Garby"; publisher Southgate Press. A revised edition by Smith alone was published by Pyramid Books in 1958 and reissued many times. From 2007 the original by Garby and Smith has been in print again.
Life
Lee Hawkins was born in Missouri in 1892 and died 1953. She was the daughter of Jameson R. Hawkins and Julia Valinda Offutt, and had five siblings, William, Sarah Valinda, Ellen, Mary, and Elijah.
Doctor Garby was born in Lewiston, Idaho in 1892, the son of Charles Henry Garby and Adelaide Laventia Strickland. He graduated from Lewiston Normal School in 1910, and was a classmate with Dr. Smith in the Class of 1914 at the University of Idaho, earning a degree in Chemical Engineering. In 1919, Dr. Garby worked for the Bureau of Chemistry in Washington DC. The Garbys had a daughter born in mid-1918. Mrs. Garby was pregnant and gave birth to her daughter at the same time as Jeannie Smith was pregnant and gave birth to Roderick, and Dr. Smith was completing his studies and his World War I service. How this affected the completion of Skylark is unknown. The Garbys later had a son, Dr. Rodes Garby, who contributed interviews regarding the writing of The Skylark of Space. Amateur critic "Gharlane of Eddore" described his conversation with Dr. Smith on the writing of The Skylark of Space in a rec.arts.sf.written post in 1998: Mrs. Garby is acknowledged in some circles as an early female writer of science fiction, but little is known of her life and she made no known contributions to the field beyond her involvement with Skylark. The brief reference to her in Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 notes that Dr. Smith never hesitated to mention either her gender or marital status, always referring to her as Mrs. Garby.
