Alright ladies, put your tongues back in your mouths. This handsome gentleman with the great hair is William Hope Hodgson, 1877-1918. He was an English sci-fi, horror, and fantasy writer who started his career as a sailor, wrote some in the middle, and ended as a soldier, killed at the age of 40 in WWI.
Author, sailor, soldier…body-builder? Oh yeah, because there’s also this:
Hey baby, can you read this manuscript I wrote while I go pump some iron?
Apparently, Mr. Hodgson was pretty short – 5’6″ to be exact – and this got him bullied and beat up quite a bit throughout his youth. As a result, Hodgson took matters into his own hands and started pumping up. In fact, he opened a gym and physical training center back in England, and starting writing about “physical culture” and the importance of strength training. That turned out to be not-so-popular for some reason (they didn’t have any Oldies to sweat to yet), so he switched to fiction and started writing fantasy and horror stories. A little strange? Yeah, maybe, but also kind of fascinating! He reminds me a lot of my absolute favorite hottie author of all time, Jack London. Let’s listen to Mr. Hodgson discuss his considerable strength in his own words.
“From your remark, I gather that the gods have given you a length of seventy two inches, while they have given this child something under sixty six. With such length I refused to be content, so make it up in breadth and muscularity.
<Katherine’s aside: When I first read this line about his “length,” I have to say, I was not thinking about height.>
“Sometime, if you would really care to have one, I must send you a decent photograph of myself, showing developement. In the meanwhile I have snipped you out a couple of weeny ones from some old postcards of mine. They may interest you.
<Katherine’s Aside: Oh, they interest me. They interest me very much. Keep talking…>
“Of course, I’m nothing like as strong as I used to be before the flue bowled me over last year, and left my heart a wee bitte weak. Also, I think that writing has taken off a lot of muscle — confound it! But I suppose one musn’t be greedy.
<Katherine’s aside: Hmm, maybe stop using the words “wee” and “weeny” please? Ruining my mental image.>
“Before I was ill, I could take two fifty-six pound weights in one hand, and put them at arm’s length over my head, and, in fact, lift a good deal more than that with more convenient weights.
<Katherine’s aside: !!!!>
Now, I very much doubt if I could lift more than eighty or ninety pounds over my head with one hand. Another thing, I could lift considerably more than a quarter of a ton off the ground, using my bare hands — no straps around hand and wrist. And that takes a bit of doing. And now — well, if I go easy I daresay I shall come back to my old form in time — let but the editors smile on me a bit.
–Letter to Coulson Kernahan, 1905
Alright, this dude is the man. Jack London, you better watch out.
The Victorianachronists 
Have you ever thought that jack London could’ve easily snuck into a Kennedy outing?
Oh, well-spotted! Had never thought of that before, but now I see it. His politics would have aligned fairly well, too.
No puns related to his novels? Sure you wouldn’t like to explore his borderlands?
Ha! That made me laugh out loud, Sir. I spent so much time thinking about Hodgson last night while writing this post that when I went to bed, I had “A Dream of XXX.”