1.
Ghost story
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A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters belief in them. The ghost may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic, linked to the ghost is the idea of hauntings, where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object or person. Colloquially, the term ghost story can refer to any kind of scary story, in a narrower sense, the ghost story has been developed as a short story format, within genre fiction. It is a form of fiction and specifically of weird fiction. While ghost stories are often meant to be scary, they have been written to serve all sorts of purposes. Ghosts often appear in the narrative as sentinels or prophets of things to come, belief in ghosts is found in all cultures around the world, and thus ghost stories may be passed down orally or in written form. A widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy, belief in ghosts is found in all cultures around the world, and thus ghost stories may be passed down orally or in written form. The campfire story, a form of storytelling, often involves recounting ghost stories. Some of the stories are old, with varying versions across multiple cultures. Many schools and educational institutions encourage ghost storytelling as part of literature, in 1929, five key features of the English ghost story were identified in Some Remarks on Ghost Stories by M. R. James. The play Mostellaria, by the Roman playwright Plautus, is the earliest known work to feature a haunted dwelling, another early account of a haunted place comes from an account by Pliny the Younger. Pliny describes the haunting of a house in Athens by a ghost bound in chains, ghosts often appeared in the tragedies of the Roman writer Seneca, who would later influence the revival of tragedy on the Renaissance stage, particularly Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare. The One Thousand and One Nights, sometimes known as Arabian Nights, contains a number of ghost stories, often involving jinn, ghouls, in particular, the tale of Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad revolves around a house haunted by jinns. Other medieval Arabic literature, such as the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity, the 11th century Japanese work The Tale of Genji contains ghost stories, and includes characters being possessed by spirits. In the mid-16th century, the works of Seneca were rediscovered by Italian humanists, senecas influence is particularly evident in Thomas Kyds The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeares Hamlet, both of which share a revenge theme, a corpse-strewn climax, and ghosts among the cast. The ghosts in Richard III also resemble the Senecan model, while the ghost in Hamlet plays a complex role. The shade of Hamlets murdered father in Hamlet has become one of the more recognizable ghosts in English literature, in another of Shakespeare’s works, Macbeth, the murdered Banquo returns as a ghost to the dismay of the title character. In English Renaissance theatre, ghosts were often depicted in the garb of the living, armour, being out-of-date by the time of the Renaissance, gave the stage ghost a sense of antiquity
2.
Horror fiction
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Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle their readers or viewers by inducing feelings of horror and terror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon has defined the horror story as a piece of fiction in prose of variable length, which shocks or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing. It creates an eerie and frightening atmosphere, Horror is frequently supernatural, though it can be non-supernatural. Often the central menace of a work of fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for the larger fears of a society. The genre of horror has ancient origins with roots in folklore and religious traditions, focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic and these were manifested in stories of beings such as witches, vampires, werewolves and ghosts. 18th century Gothic horror drew on these sources with the seminal and controversial The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and this marked the first incorporated elements of the supernatural instead of pure realism. In fact, the first edition was published disguised as a medieval romance from Italy discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. Once revealed as contemporary, many found it anachronistic, reactionary, or simply in poor taste — but it proved to be immediately popular. That first novel of Gothic horror inspired such works as Vathek by William Beckford, A Sicilian Romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian by Ann Radcliffe and The Monk by Matthew Lewis. A significant amount of fiction of this era was written by women and marketed at a female audience. The Gothic tradition blossomed into the modern readers call horror literature in the 19th century. Each of these novels and novellas created an icon of horror seen in modern re-imaginings on the stage. The proliferation of periodicals, as early as the turn of the century. One writer who specialized in fiction for mainstream pulps such as All-Story Magazine was Tod Robbins, whose fiction dealt with themes of madness. Later, specialist publications emerged to give horror writers an outlet, including Weird Tales, influential horror writers of the early 20th century made inroads in these mediums. Early cinema was inspired by aspects of horror literature, and early horror cinema started a strong tradition of horror films. This imagery made these comics controversial, and as a consequence they were frequently censored, many modern novels claim an early description of the living dead in a precursor to the modern zombie tale, including Dennis Wheatleys Strange Conflict, H. P. Lovecraft stories such as Cool Air, In The Vault, richard Mathesons novel I Am Legend would also influence an entire genre of apocalyptic zombie fiction emblematic of the films of George A. Romero
3.
Fantasy
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Fantasy is a fiction genre set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Most fantasy uses magic or other elements as a main plot element, theme. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds, in popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy works by many writers, artists, filmmakers. Fantasy is studied in a number of disciplines including English and other studies, cultural studies, comparative literature, history. The identifying trait of fantasy is the reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. This differs from realistic fiction in that whereas realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, an author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters, plots, and settings that are impossible in reality. Fantasy has often compared with science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements, a science fiction narrative is unlikely, though seeming possible through logical scientific and/or technological extrapolation, whereas fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. The imagined elements of fantasy do not need an explanation to be narratively functional. Authors have to rely on the suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment. Despite both genres heavy reliance on the supernatural, fantasy and horror are distinguishable, horror primarily evokes fear through the protagonists weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Beginning perhaps with the earliest written documents, mythic and other elements that would come to define fantasy. MacDonald was an influence on both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The other major fantasy author of this era was William Morris, lord Dunsany established the genres popularity in both the novel and the short story form. Many popular mainstream authors also began to write fantasy at this time, including H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Indeed, juvenile fantasy was considered more acceptable than fantasy intended for adults, nathaniel Hawthorne wrote fantasy in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, intended for children, though works for adults only verged on fantasy. Political and social trends can affect a societys reception towards fantasy, in the early 20th century, the New Culture Movements enthusiasm for Westernization and science in China compelled them to condemn the fantastical shenmo genre of traditional Chinese literature
4.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and he is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the countrys earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a difficult life. Poe was born in Boston, the child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year, thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but Poe was with them well into young adulthood, tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money, Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at time that his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with the anonymous collection of poems Tamerlane and Other Poems. With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement, however, Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and he ultimately parted ways with John Allan. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the several years working for literary journals and periodicals. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, in Richmond in 1836, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem The Raven to instant success and his wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal The Penn, Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, a number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre. He was born Edgar Poe in Boston on January 19,1809 and he had an elder brother William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister Rosalie Poe. Their grandfather David Poe Sr. had emigrated from Cavan, Ireland to America around the year 1750, Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeares King Lear, a play that the couple were performing in 1809
5.
William Hope Hodgson
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William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction. Hodgson used his experiences at sea to lend authentic detail to his horror stories, many of which are set on the ocean. His novels, such as The House on the Borderland and The Night Land, feature more cosmic themes, early in his writing career Hodgson dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted notice as a photographer and achieved renown as a bodybuilder. He died in World War I at age 40, Hodgson was born in Blackmore End, Essex, the son of Samuel Hodgson, an Anglican priest, and Lissie Sarah Brown. He was the second of 12 children, three of whom died in infancy, the death of a child is a theme in several of Hodgsons works including the short stories The Valley of Lost Children, The Sea-Horses, and The Searcher of the End House. Hodgsons father was moved frequently and served 11 different parishes in 21 years, including one in County Galway and this setting was later featured in Hodgsons novel The House on the Borderland. Hodgson ran away from his school at age 13, in an effort to become a sailor. He was caught and returned to his family, but eventually received his fathers permission to be apprenticed as a cabin boy, Hodgsons father died shortly thereafter, of throat cancer, leaving the family impoverished, while William was away, the family subsisted largely on charity. This led him to begin a program of personal training, according to Sam Moskowitz, The primary motivation of his body development was not health, but self-defence. His relatively short height and sensitive, almost beautiful face made him a target for bullying seamen. When they moved in to him, they would learn too late that they had come to grips with easily one of the most powerful men, pound for pound. The theme of bullying of an apprentice by older seamen, and revenge taken and he also built up a stamp collection, practised his marksmanship while hunting, and kept journals of his experiences at sea. In 1898, he was awarded the Royal Humane Society medal for heroism for saving another sailor who had fallen overboard in shark-infested waters. In 1899, at age 22, he opened W. H. Hodgsons School of Physical Culture in Blackburn, England, among his customers were members of the Blackburn police force. Hodgson was not shy of publicity, and in another stunt, rode a bicycle down a street so steep that it had stairs. Despite his reputation, he found that he could not earn a living running his personal training business, which was seasonal in nature
6.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. He was virtually unknown and published only in magazines before he died in poverty. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life, among his most celebrated tales are The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth, both canonical to the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as author and editor and he saw commercial success increasingly elude him in this latter period, partly because he lacked the confidence and drive to promote himself. He subsisted in straitened circumstances in his last years, an inheritance was completely spent by the time that he died at age 46. Lovecraft was born on August 20,1890 in his home at 194 Angell Street in Providence. Both of his parents were of entirely English ancestry, and most of his ancestors had been in New England since the colonial period and his great-grandfather Joseph Lovecraft Jr. emigrated to Rochester, New York from Devon, England in 1831. Lovecraft maintained throughout his life that his father died in a condition of paralysis brought on by nervous exhaustion. It has been suggested that his fathers mental illness may have been caused by syphilis, all five resided together in the family home. Lovecraft was a prodigy, reciting poetry at the age of three and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with such as One Thousand and One Nights, Thomas Bulfinchs Age of Fable, and childrens versions of the Iliad. His grandfather also stirred the boys interest in the weird by telling him his own tales of gothic horror. Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, and he attended school until he was eight years old because of his sickly condition. He read voraciously during this period and became enamored of chemistry. He produced several hectographed publications with a circulation, beginning in 1899 with The Scientific Gazette. Four years later, he returned to school at Hope High School. Beginning in his life, Lovecraft is believed to have suffered from sleep paralysis. Much of his work is thought to have been directly inspired by these terrors
7.
Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany
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Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published stories, as well as successful plays, novels. He is best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elflands Daughter and he achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world. Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Irelands longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis, from a historically wealthy and famous family, Dunsany was related to many well-known Irish figures. He was a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh and he was also related to the prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist, Home Rule politician the Hon. Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett PC, KCVO, FRS, DL, JP and George Noble Plunkett, Papal Count and Republican politician, father of Joseph Mary Plunkett and his mother was a cousin of Sir Richard Burton, and he inherited from her considerable height, being 64. Plunketts only sibling, a brother, from whom he was later estranged, was the noted British naval officer. Edward Plunkett grew up at the properties, most notably Dunstall Priory in Shoreham, Kent and Dunsany Castle in County Meath. His schooling was at Cheam, Eton College and finally the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, the title passed to him at his fathers death at a fairly young age, in 1899, and Dunsany returned to Dunsany Castle after war duty, in 1901. In 1903, he met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers, youngest daughter of the 7th Earl of Jersey, living at Osterley Park and their only child, Randal, was born in 1906. The Dunsanys were socially active in both Dublin and London, and travelled between their homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during World Wars I and II, and the Irish War of Independence. He was friendly with, for example, George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty and, for a time, Dunsany was a keen hunter and sportsman, and was at one time the pistol-shooting champion of Ireland. He enjoyed cricket, provided the local cricket ground situated near Dunsany Crossroads and he was president of both the Irish Chess Union and the Kent County Chess Association for some years, and of Sevenoaks Chess Club for 54 years. Dunsany campaigned for animal rights, being known especially for his opposition to the docking of dogs tails and he was a supporter of Scouting over many years, serving as President of the Sevenoaks district Boy Scouts Association. He also supported the drama group, the Shoreham Players. Dunsany provided support for the British Legion in both Ireland and Kent, including grounds in Trim and poetry for the Irish branchs annual memorial service on a number of occasions, Dunsanys fame arose chiefly from his prolific writings, and he was involved with the Irish Literary Revival
8.
Arthur Machen
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Arthur Machen was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and his novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. He is also known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons. Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, though he referred to the area by the name of the medieval Welsh kingdom. The house of his birth, opposite the Olde Bull Inn in The Square at Caerleon, is adjacent to the Priory Hotel and is marked with a commemorative blue plaque. The beautiful landscape of Monmouthshire, with its associations of Celtic, Roman, and medieval history, made an impression on him. Machen was descended from a line of clergymen, the family having originated in Carmarthenshire. In his fathers library he found also the Waverley Novels, an edition of the Glossary of Gothic Architecture. At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem Eleusinia on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In 1884 he published his work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco. This led to work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir of Béroalde de Verville. Machens translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years, in 1887, the year his father died, Machen married Amelia Hogg, an unconventional music teacher with a passion for the theatre, who had literary friends in Londons bohemian circles. Hogg had introduced Machen to the writer and occultist A. E. Waite, Machen also made the acquaintance of other literary figures, such as M. P. Shiel and Edgar Jepson. Soon after his marriage, Machen began to receive a series of legacies from Scottish relatives that allowed him to devote more time to writing. Around 1890 Machen began to publish in magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan and it was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machens story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and consequently sold well, Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895
9.
M. R. James
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Montague Rhodes James OM FBA, who published under the name M. R. James, was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of Kings College, Cambridge, and of Eton College. Though Jamess work as a medievalist is still regarded, he is best remembered for his ghost stories. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors, however, Jamess protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story, James was born in a Goodnestone, Dover clergy house in Kent, England, although his parents had associations with Aldeburgh in Suffolk. His father was Herbert James, an Evangelical Anglican clergyman, and his mother and he had two older brothers, Sydney and Herbert, and an older sister, Grace. Sydney James later became Archdeacon of Dudley, from the age of three until 1909 Jamess home, if not always his residence, was at the Rectory in Great Livermere, Suffolk. This had previously been the home of another eminent Suffolk antiquary. Several of Jamess ghost stories are set in Suffolk, including Oh, Whistle, in September 1873 he arrived as a boarder at Temple Grove School, one of the leading boys preparatory schools of the day. He lived for years, first as an undergraduate, then as a don and provost, at Kings College, Cambridge. The university provides settings for several of his tales, apart from medieval subjects, James studied the classics and appeared very successfully in a staging of Aristophanes play The Birds, with music by Hubert Parry. His ability as an actor was also apparent when he read his new ghost stories to friends at Christmas time, James is best known for his ghost stories, but his work as a medievalist scholar was prodigious and remains highly respected in scholarly circles. Indeed, the success of his stories was founded on his antiquarian talents and his 1917 edition of the Latin hagiography of Æthelberht II of East Anglia, king and martyr, remains authoritative. He catalogued many of the libraries of the colleges of the University of Cambridge. Among his other works, he wrote The Apocalypse in Art. He also translated the New Testament apocrypha and contributed to the Encyclopaedia Biblica and his ability to wear his learning lightly is apparent in his Suffolk and Norfolk, in which a great deal of knowledge is presented in a popular and accessible form, and in Abbeys. James also achieved a deal during his directorship of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He managed to secure a number of important paintings and manuscripts. James was Provost of Eton College from 1918 to 1936 and he was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930
10.
Clark Ashton Smith
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Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling. Smith was one of the big three of Weird Tales, with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, the fantasy critic L. Sprague de Camp said of him that nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse. Smith was a member of the Lovecraft circle and his friendship with Lovecraft lasted from 1922 until Lovecrafts death in 1937. His work is marked by a rich and ornate vocabulary, a cosmic perspective. Smith was born January 13,1893, in Long Valley, California, of English and he spent most of his life in the small town of Auburn, California, living in a small cabin built by his parents, Fanny and Timeus Smith. His parents decided it was better for him to be educated at home, however, he was an insatiable reader, and continued to teach himself after he left school. His education began with the reading of Robinson Crusoe, Gullivers Travels, the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Madame dAulnoy, the Arabian Nights. He read an unabridged dictionary through, word for word, studying not only the definitions of the words, having an extraordinary eidetic memory, he seems to have retained most or all of it. The other main course in Smiths self-education was to read the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica through at least twice, Smith later taught himself French and Spanish in order to translate verse out of those languages. Smith professed to hate the provinciality of the town of Auburn. His first literary efforts, at the age of 11, took the form of fairy tales, later, he wrote long adventure novels dealing with Oriental life. By 14 he had written a short adventure novel called The Black Diamonds which was lost for years until published in 2002. Another juvenile novel was written in his teenaged years—The Sword of Zagan, at age 17, he sold several tales to The Black Cat, a magazine which specialized in unusual tales. He also published some tales in the Overland Monthly in this brief foray into fiction which preceded his poetic career, however, it was primarily poetry that motivated the young Smith and he confined his efforts to poetry for more than a decade. On a month-long visit to Sterling in Carmel, California, Smith was introduced by Sterling to the poetry of Baudelaire and he became Sterlings protégé and Sterling helped him to publish his first volume of poems, The Star-Treader and Other Poems, at the age of 19. Smith received international acclaim for the collection, the Star-Treader was received very favorably by American critics, one of whom named Smith the Keats of the Pacific. Smith briefly moved among the circle that included Ambrose Bierce and Jack London, a little later, Smiths health broke down and for eight years his literary production was intermittent, though he produced his best poetry during this period
11.
Sheridan Le Fanu
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Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was a leading ghost story writer of the century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. M. R. James described Le Fanu as absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories, three of his best-known works are Uncle Silas, Carmilla and The House by the Churchyard. Sheridan Le Fanu was born at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a family of Huguenot. He had a sister, Catherine Frances, and a younger brother. His parents were Thomas Philip Le Fanu and Emma Lucretia Dobbin, both his grandmother Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle Richard Brinsley Sheridan were playwrights, and his mother was also a writer, producing a biography of Charles Orpen. The Phoenix Park and the adjacent village and parish church of Chapelizod would appear in Le Fanus later stories, in 1826 the family moved to Abington, County Limerick, where Le Fanus father Thomas took up his second rectorship in Ireland. Although he had a tutor, who, according to his brother William, taught them nothing and was dismissed in disgrace. By the age of fifteen, Joseph was writing poetry which he shared with his mother and siblings and his father was a stern Protestant churchman and raised his family in an almost Calvinist tradition. In 1832 the disorders of the Tithe War affected the region, there were about six thousand Catholics in the parish of Abington, and only a few dozen members of the Church of Ireland. However, the government compelled all farmers, including Catholics, to pay tithes for the upkeep of the Protestant church, the following year the family moved back temporarily to Dublin, to Williamstown Avenue in a southern suburb, where Thomas was to work on a Government commission. Although Thomas Le Fanu tried to live as though he were well-off, Thomas took the rectorships in the south of Ireland for the money, as they provided a decent living through tithes. However, from 1830, as the result of agitation against the tithes, in 1838 the government instituted a scheme of paying rectors a fixed sum, but in the interim the Dean had little besides rent on some small properties he had inherited. In 1833 Thomas had to borrow £100 from his cousin Captain Dobbins to visit his sister in Bath. At his death Thomas had almost nothing to leave to his sons and his widow went to stay with the younger son William. Sheridan Le Fanu studied law at Trinity College in Dublin, where he was elected Auditor of the College Historical Society. Under a system peculiar to Ireland he did not have to live in Dublin to attend lectures and he was called to the bar in 1839, but he never practised and soon abandoned law for journalism. In 1838 he began contributing stories to the Dublin University Magazine, including his first ghost story, entitled The Ghost and he became owner of several newspapers from 1840, including the Dublin Evening Mail and the Warder
12.
Pulp magazine
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Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the 1950s. The term pulp derives from the wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, in contrast. The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages, it was 7 inches wide by 10 inches high, the pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter. The first pulp was Frank Munseys revamped Argosy Magazine of 1896, with about 135,000 words per issue, on paper with untrimmed edges. In six years Argosy went from a few thousand copies per month to over half a million, Street & Smith, a dime novel and boys weekly publisher, was next on the market. Seeing Argosys success, they launched The Popular Magazine in 1903, due to differences in page layout however, the magazine had substantially less text than Argosy. Haggards Lost World genre influenced several key pulp writers, including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Talbot Mundy and Abraham Merritt. Street and Smiths next innovation was the introduction of specialized genre pulps, with each focusing on a particular genre, such as detective stories, romance. At their peak of popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, the most successful pulps could sell up to one million copies per issue, in 1934, Frank Gruber says there were some 150 pulp titles. The most successful pulp magazines were Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book and Short Stories, although pulp magazines were primarily an American phenomenon, there were also a number of British pulp magazines published between the Edwardian era and World War II. Notable UK pulps included Pall Mall Magazine, The Novel Magazine, Cassells Magazine, The Story-Teller, The Sovereign Magazine, Hutchinsons Adventure-Story and Hutchinsons Mystery-Story. The German fantasy magazine Der Orchideengarten had a format to American pulp magazines, in that it was printed on rough pulp paper. During the Second World War paper shortages had a impact on pulp production, starting a steady rise in costs. Beginning with Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine in 1941, pulp magazines began to switch to digest size, in 1949, Street & Smith closed most of their pulp magazines in order to move upmarket and produce slicks. The pulp format declined from rising expenses, but even more due to the competition from comic books, television. In a more affluent post-war America, the price gap compared to slick magazines was far less significant, in the 1950s, mens adventure magazines began to replace the pulp. The format is still in use for some lengthy serials, like the German science fiction weekly Perry Rhodan, many titles of course survived only briefly
13.
Weird Tales
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Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in March 1923, Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The first issue under Wrights control was dated November 1924, the magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks it prospered over the next fifteen years. Under Wrights control the magazine lived up to its subtitle, The Unique Magazine, Lovecrafts Cthulhu mythos stories first appeared in Weird Tales, starting with The Call of Cthulhu in 1928. These were well-received, and a group of associated with Lovecraft wrote other stories set in the same milieu. Other well-liked authors included Nictzin Dyalhis, E. Hoffman Price, Robert Bloch, Edmond Hamilton wrote a good deal of science fiction for Weird Tales, though after a few years he used the magazine for his more fantastic stories, and submitted his space operas elsewhere. In 1938 the magazine was sold to William Delaney, the publisher of Short Stories, Weird Tales ceased publication in 1954, but since then numerous attempts have been made to relaunch the magazine, starting in 1973. The longest-lasting version began in 1988 and ran with a hiatus for over 20 years under an assortment of publishers. In the mid-1990s the title was changed to Worlds of Fantasy & Horror because of licensing issues, as of 2016, the most recent published issue was dated Spring 2014. In the late 19th century popular magazines typically did not print fiction to the exclusion of content, they would include non-fiction articles. In October 1896, the Frank A. Munsey companys Argosy magazine was the first to switch to printing only fiction and this is now regarded by magazine historians as having been the start of the pulp magazine era. Other titles that specialized in particular fiction genres followed, starting in 1915 with Detective Story Magazine, with Western Story Magazine following in 1919. C Henneberger, a journalist and magazine editor who had been publishing College Humor and Magazine of Fun, formed Rural Publishing Corporation of Chicago and their first venture was Detective Tales, a pulp magazine that appeared twice a month, starting with the October 1,1922 issue. It was initially unsuccessful, and as part of a refinancing plan Henneberger decided to publish another magazine that would allow him to some of his costs between the two titles. Henneberger had long been an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, so he created a magazine that would focus on horror. Henneberger chose Edwin Baird, the editor of Detective Tales, to edit Weird Tales, Farnsworth Wright was first reader, and Otis Adelbert Kline also worked on the magazine, assisting Baird. Payment rates were low, usually between a quarter and a cent per word, the budget went up to one cent per word for the most popular writers. Sales were initially poor, and Henneberger soon decided to change the format from the standard size to large pulp
14.
S. T. Joshi
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Sunand Tryambak Joshi, known as S. T. Joshi, is an Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of H. P. Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction. Joshi has compiled, edited or written over 200 books, detailed in the recent publication 200 Books by S. T. He is a significant bibliographer, having compiled bibliographies of Lovecraft, Bierce, Dunsany, Ramsey Campbell, William Hope Hodgson, Ray Bradbury and he has been general editor of the Horror Classics series for Dover Publications. Joshi is known for his style, and has been described by editor Ellen Datlow as the nastiest reviewer in the field. Most recently he has turned his attention to collecting and editing the works of H. L. Mencken and he currently resides in Seattle, Washington. Joshi discovered Lovecraft when he was 13 in the library in Muncie. He also wrote some Lovecraftian fiction such as the story The Recurring Doom, which can be found in Robert M. Joshi elected to become a freshman at Brown University, where he received a B. A. and M. A. in classics, primarily because of the holdings of Lovecraft books and manuscripts in the John Hay Library. He later did work at Princeton University from 1982 to 1984. His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and exploration of the dominant worldviews of the authors in question and his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy, and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. Aside from his biography of Lovecraft, Joshi regards this book as his most notable achievement to date, unutterable Horror, A History of Supernatural Fiction is a comprehensive history of supernatural fiction from Gilgamesh to the present day. Older claimed Lovecrafts image was unacceptable because of his racism, in response, Joshi stated “the WFA bust acknowledges Lovecraft’s literary status in the field of weird fiction and it says nothing about Lovecraft’s personality or character. I’m pretty sure this is not the message the World Fantasy Convention meant to send when they gave Okorafor the prize in the first place. In 1987, Joshi became the fifth Official Editor of the EOD amateur press association, Lovecraft particularly but which also examines weird and fantasy fiction in all its forms. He has maintained this role for more than two decades and is still Editor, Joshi edited the journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, both published by Necronomicon Press, and Studies in the Fantastic, published by the University of Tampa Press. He is editor of Weird Fiction Review, and the Hippocampus Press journals Spectral Realms, Lovecraft Annual and he was formerly co-editor of Dead Reckonings. Joshi and Schultz are now progressively issuing volumes of H. P. Lovecrafts letters to individual correspondents through Hippocampus Press. Volumes already issued include Lovecrafts letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, Alfred Galpin, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, James F. Morton, Elizabeth Toldridge, Joshi edited the five-volume set of Lovecrafts Collected Essays issued by Hippocampus Press from 2004-2006
15.
Fantastique
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Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre that overlaps with science fiction, horror, and fantasy. The fantastique is a genre within French literature. What is distinctive about the fantastique is the intrusion of supernatural phenomena into an otherwise realist narrative and it evokes phenomena which are not only left unexplained but which are inexplicable from the readers point of view. Instead, characters in a work of fantastique are, just like the readers and this refusal may be mixed with doubt, disbelief, fear, or some combination of those reactions. Fantastique literature is considered close to science fiction. The Fantastique is often linked to a particular ambiance, a sort of tension in the face of the impossible, a good deal of fear is often involved, either because the characters are afraid or because the author wants to provoke fright in the reader. However, fear is not a component of fantastique. In that case, the fantastique is nothing more than an area on a spectrum from magic realism to fantasy. Fantastique is a term that has also used to describe many television series. The fantastique began to become defined in the Middle Ages, the old Celtic, Frankish and Germanic myths were translated from religion into popular folklore. The root of thought about and artistic depiction of many things which are today often termed supernatural has its beginnings in this period. Concepts and characters such as Melusine, Harlequin, Oberon, Morgan Le Fay, the Fabliaux, satirical fables which relied on the tradition established by Aesop of using anthropomorphic animals such as Le Roman de Renart, generally attributed to poet Pierre de Saint-Cloud. The 16th century was marked by the emergence of new ideas and literary trends, the Renaissance bloomed in France during the reign of King Francis I who created a favorable environment for the development of letters, arts and sciences. It was during the French Renaissance that proto-science fiction first split from the fantastique, then, at the peak of his literary fame, he devoted several of his more famous Hymnes to supernatural subjects such as Daimons and astrology. Famous playwright Pierre Corneilles lesser-known but classic tragedies, Médée and Circé, popularized warlocks, the Malleus Maleficarum spawned a number of French imitations, among which were Jean Bodins La Démonomanie des Sorciers and Le Fléau des Démons et ses Sorciers. The 18th century was known as the Siècle des Lumières, or Age of Enlightenment, baroque was the link between the Merveilleux of the Renaissance and the more formalized fairy tales of the Enlightenment period. The precursor in the genre was Madame dAulnoy who, in 1690, introduced in her rambling novel Histoire dHyppolite, Comte de Douglas, in it, Perrault had carefully collected a number of popular folk tales and legends, such as Cendrillon a. k. a. Cinderella, La Belle au Bois Dormant a. k. a, donkey Skin, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Barbe-Bleue, Le Chat Botté, etc
16.
Science fiction
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Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a literature of ideas. Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying science fiction is what we point to when we say it, a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography, you do not know what it is, in 1970 or 1971William Atheling Jr. According to science fiction writer Robert A, rod Serlings definition is fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. Science fiction elements include, A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, a spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth. Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots, futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers. Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted physical laws, for time travel, wormholes. New and different political or social systems, e. g. utopian, dystopian, post-scarcity, paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis Other universes or dimensions and travel between them. A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of science itself. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Keplers work the first science fiction story and it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earths motion is seen from there. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon, more examples appeared throughout the 19th century. Wells The War of the Worlds describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry and it is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 19th century, the scientific romance was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland, the term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon. In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars
17.
Clive Barker
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Clive Barker is an English writer, film director, and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of stories, the Books of Blood. He has since written many novels and other works, and his fiction has been adapted into films, notably the Hellraiser and he was the Executive Producer of the film Gods and Monsters. Barkers paintings and illustrations have been featured in galleries in the United States as well as within his own books and he has created original characters and series for comic books, and some of his more popular horror stories have been adapted to comics. His archives have been a source of material for biographies and non-fiction books containing his personal essays, discussions of his theatre work, interviews. Barker was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, the son of Joan Ruby, a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker and he was educated at Dovedale Primary School, Quarry Bank High School and the University of Liverpool, where he studied English and Philosophy. When he was three years old, Barker witnessed the French skydiver Léo Valentin plummet to his death during a performance at an air show in Liverpool, Barker would later allude to Valentin in many of his stories. Barker is an author of contemporary horror/fantasy and he began writing horror early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game. Later he moved towards modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with elements in Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show, the world-spanning Imajica. When the Books of Blood were first published in the United States in paperback, Stephen King was quoted on the covers, I have seen the future of horror. As influences on his writing, Barker lists Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, William S. Burroughs, William Blake and Jean Cocteau and he is the writer of the best-selling Abarat series, and plans on producing two more novels in the series. Barker has an interest in film production and he wrote the screenplays for Underworld and Rawhead Rex, both directed by George Pavlou. Displeased by how his material was handled, he moved to directing with Hellraiser, after his film Nightbreed flopped, Barker returned to write and direct Lord of Illusions. The short story The Forbidden, from Barkers Books of Blood, provided the basis for the 1992 film Candyman, Barker was an executive producer of the film Gods and Monsters, which received major critical acclaim. He had been working on a series of adaptations of his The Abarat Quintet books under Disneys management, but because of creative differences. In 2005, Barker and horror film producer Jorge Saralegui created the production company Midnight Picture Show with the intent of producing two horror films per year. In October 2006, Barker announced through his website that he will be writing the script to a remake of the original Hellraiser film. He is developing a film based on his Tortured Souls line of toys from McFarlane Toys, Barker is a prolific visual artist, often illustrating his own books
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Ramsey Campbell
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Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. Two of his novels have been filmed, both for non-English-speaking markets, Campbell was born in Liverpool, England, to Alexander Ramsey and Nora Campbell. He was educated by Christian Brothers at St Edwards College, Liverpool, Campbells childhood and adolescence were marked by the rift between his parents, who became estranged shortly after his birth. Campbells father became a presence more often heard than seen. Campbell states, I didnt see my face to face for nearly twenty years. Other autobiographical pieces regarding Campbells life are available in Section V, On Ramsey Campbell in his essay collection Ramsey Campbell, Probably,30 Years of Essays and Articles. Campbells mother wrote a great deal, novel after novel, but was largely unpublished aside from a handful of stories in writers magazines. She encouraged her son to send his writing off from an early age. Growing up in the landscape of post-war Liverpool, he avidly consumed the work of Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Franz Kafka. Campbells earliest tales, written when he was 11 years old, comprised a collection of sixteen stories. His English teacher, Brother Kelly, used to have him read his stories to the class and it is of interest that, though the stories are mostly mainstream spectral lore, one story can be considered a very early mythos yarn. The manuscripts of Campbells early tales are housed at the Local History Library of the Liverpool Public Libraries, at the age of twelve, Campbell attempted to write a novel titled Broken Moon, influenced by Arthur Machen, but it petered out after fifty pages. By the age of 14, he discovered Lovecrafts Cry Horror, a British edition of the collection entitled The Lurking Fear, and read it in one day, finding the fictions sense of awesomeness as well as horror extraordinarily appealing. He had also read Arthur Machens major horror stories by this age, on leaving school at age sixteen, Campbell went to work in the Inland Revenue as a tax officer. Campbell sold various of his stories to editors including August Derleth. His concept of what was possible in the genre became highly imbued with the influence of Lovecraft for the next few years. In December 1961, Campbell completed the story The Church in High Street which he sent to August Derleth at Arkham House, Derleth accepted the story in February 1962 and it became Campbells first professionally published tale, appearing in the Derleth-edited anthology Dark Mind, Dark Heart. Campbell wrote various other tales of the Cthulhu Mythos between 1961 and 1963, Derleth gave the young writer invaluable advice on improving his writing style
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S. Ansky
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Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, known by his pseudonym S. Ansky, was a Belarusian Jewish author, playwright, researcher of Jewish folklore, polemicist, and cultural and political activist. He is best known for his play The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, in 1917, after the Russian Revolution, he was elected to the Russian Constituent Assembly as a Social-Revolutionary deputy. S. Ansky was born in Chashniki, Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire, under the influence of the Russian narodnik movement, Ansky became interested in ethnography, as well as socialism, and became a political activist. Anskys ethnographic collections were locked away in Soviet vaults for years, the State Ethnographic Museum at St. Petersburg holds a good deal of it. Some of his vast collection of recordings made on these expeditions have been transferred to CD as well. Initially he wrote in Russian, but from 1904 he became known mainly as a Yiddish author and he is best known for his play The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, written in 1914. The play was first staged in the Elyseum Theatre in Warsaw two months after the death on November 8,1920. It was subsequently translated into a dozen or more languages and performed thousands of all over the world. It is still being produced, along with adaptations, as well as operas, ballets. It is considered the jewel of the Jewish theatre, in the early years The Dybbuk was considered so significant that parodies of it were written and produced. Although The Dybbuk is An-sky’s best-known work, he published a number of works of literature, politics. His Collected Works, which do not include all his writings, An-sky wrote a number of other plays, four of which are included in this collection, long out of print. One is, like The Dybbuk, a Hasidic Gothic story, the other three plays have revolutionary themes, and were originally written in Russian, Father and Son, In a Conspiratorial Apartment, and The Grandfather. All four have recently republished in a bilingual Yiddish-English edition. Ansky was also the author of the song Di Shvue, which became the anthem of the Jewish Socialist Bund party and he was the author of the poem In Zaltsikn Yam, which was dedicated to the Bund as well. Gabriella Safran, Wandering Soul, The Dybbuks Creator, S. An-sky Shmuel Werses. S, an-skis Between Two Worlds, A Textual History. In Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore, Jerusalem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,1986 Gabriella Safran and Steven Zipperstein, The worlds of S. An-sky. A Russian intellectual at the turn of the century, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Cal.2006, ISBN 0-8047-5344-X Mlotek, Eleanor G. S. Ansky, 1863-1920, His Life and Works, Catalog of an Exhibition
20.
Charles Baudelaire
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Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal, expresses the nature of beauty in modern. Baudelaires highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud. He is credited with coining the term modernity to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in a metropolis. This obsessive idea is all a child of giant cities. Baudelaire is one of the innovators in French literature. He made Paris the subject of modern poetry and he would bring the citys details to life in the eyes and hearts of his readers. Baudelaire was born in Paris, France, on April 9,1821 and his father, François Baudelaire, a senior civil servant and amateur artist, was 34 years older than Baudelaires mother, Caroline. François died during Baudelaires childhood, in 1827, the following year, Caroline married Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick, who later became a French ambassador to various noble courts. He stated in a letter to her that, There was in my childhood a period of passionate love for you, Baudelaire regularly begged his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that a lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission was just around the corner. Baudelaire was educated in Lyon, where he boarded, Baudelaire was erratic in his studies, at times diligent, at other times prone to idleness. Later, he attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, studying law and he began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. He also began to run up debts, mostly for clothes, upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother I dont feel I have a vocation for anything. His stepfather had in mind a career in law or diplomacy and his mother later recalled, Oh, what grief. If Charles had let himself be guided by his stepfather, his career would have very different. He would not have left a name in literature, it is true and his stepfather sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India, in 1841 in the hope of ending his dissolute habits. The trip provided strong impressions of the sea, sailing, and exotic ports, on returning to the taverns of Paris, he began to compose some of the poems of Les Fleurs du Mal. At 21, he received an inheritance but squandered much of it within a few years
21.
Gertrude Barrows Bennett
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Gertrude Barrows Bennett was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States, publishing her stories under the pseudonym Francis Stevens. Bennett wrote a number of highly acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has called the woman who invented dark fantasy. Her most famous books include Claimed and the lost world novel The Citadel of Fear, Bennett also wrote an early dystopian novel, The Heads of Cerberus. Gertrude Mabel Barrows was born in Minneapolis in 1883 and she completed school through the eighth grade, then attended night school in hopes of becoming an illustrator. Instead, she working as a stenographer, a job she held on. In 1909 Barrows married Stewart Bennett, a British journalist and explorer, a year later her husband died while on an expedition. With a new-born daughter to raise, Bennett continued working as a stenographer, when her father died toward the end of World War I, Bennett assumed care for her invalid mother. During this time period Bennett began to write a number of stories and novels. In the mid-1920s, she moved to California, because Bennett was estranged from her daughter, for a number of years researchers believed Bennett died in 1939. However, new research, including her death certificate, shows that she died in 1948, Bennett wrote her first short story at age 17, a science fiction story titled The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar. She mailed the story to Argosy, then one of the top pulp magazines, the story was accepted and published in the March 1904 issue. Once Bennett began to care of her mother, she decided to return to fiction writing as a means of supporting her family. The first story she completed after her return to writing was the novella The Nightmare, the story is set on an island separated from the rest of the world, on which evolution has taken a different course. The Nightmare resembles Edgar Rice Burroughs The Land That Time Forgot, while Bennett had submitted The Nightmare under her own name, she had asked to use a pseudonym if it was published. The magazines editor chose not to use the pseudonym Bennett suggested, when readers responded positively to the story, Bennett chose to continue writing under the name. Over the next few years, Bennett wrote a number of short stories and her short story Friend Island, for example, is set in a 22nd-century ruled by women. Another story is the novella Serapion, about a man possessed by a supernatural creature and this story has been released in an electronic book entitled Possessed, A Tale of the Demon Serapion, with three other stories by her. Many of her stories have been collected in The Nightmare
22.
E. F. Benson
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Edward Frederic E. F. Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer. E. F. Benson was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, the child of the headmaster, Edward White Benson. Benson was educated at Temple Grove School, then at Marlborough College and he continued his education at Kings College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he was a member of the Pitt Club, Bensons parents had six children and no grandchildren. E. F. Benson never married, and is speculated to have been homosexual, E. F. Benson was an excellent athlete, and represented England at figure skating. He was a precocious and prolific writer, publishing his first book while still a student, nowadays he is principally known for his Mapp and Lucia series about Emmeline Lucia Lucas and Elizabeth Mapp. Benson died in 1940 of throat cancer at the University College Hospital and he is buried in the cemetery at Rye, East Sussex. Bensons first book was Sketches from Marlborough and he started his novel writing career with the fashionably controversial Dodo, which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama. The Mapp and Lucia series, written late in his career, consists of six novels. The novels are, Queen Lucia, Lucia in London, Miss Mapp, Mapp and Lucia, Lucias Progress, the short stories are The Male Impersonator and Desirable Residences. Both appear in anthologies of Bensons short stories, and the former is often appended to the end of the novel Miss Mapp. During 2007, the series was rerun on the British digital channel ITV3. A new 3-part adaptation written by Steve Pemberton was broadcast across three nights on BBC One, 29th, 30th, and 31 December 2014 and these spook stories, as they were also called, were then reprinted in collections by his principal publisher, Walter Hutchinson. The catchphrase from the story, Room for one more, even spawned an urban legend, Bensons David Blaize and the Blue Door is a childrens fantasy influenced by the work of Lewis Carroll. Mr Tillys Seance is a witty and amusing story about a man flattened by a traction-engine who finds himself dead, other notable stories are the eerie The Room in the Tower and Pirates. Benson is also known for a series of biographies/autobiographies and memoirs and his last book, delivered to his publisher ten days before his death, was an autobiography entitled Final Edition. H. P. Lovecraft spoke highly of Bensons works in his Supernatural Horror in Literature, further Mapp and Lucia books have been written by Tom Holt, Guy Fraser-Sampson, and Ian Shepherd. The principal setting of four of the Mapp and Lucia books is a town called Tilling, which is based on Rye, East Sussex
23.
Ambrose Bierce
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Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. He wrote the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and compiled a satirical lexicon and his vehemence as a critic, his motto Nothing matters, and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work, all earned him the nickname Bitter Bierce. Despite his reputation as a critic, Bierce was known to encourage younger writers, including the poets George Sterling and Herman George Scheffauer. Bierce employed a style of writing, especially in his stories. His style often embraces an abrupt beginning, dark imagery, vague references to time, limited descriptions, impossible events, in 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He was rumored to be traveling with rebel troops, and was not seen again, Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24,1842, to Marcus Aurelius Bierce and Laura Sherwood Bierce. His mother was a descendant of William Bradford and his parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep love for books and writing. Bierce grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attending school at the county seat. He left home at 15 to become a printers devil at a small Ohio newspaper, at the outset of the American Civil War, Bierce enlisted in the Union Armys 9th Indiana Infantry. In February 1862 he was commissioned a first lieutenant, and served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, making maps of likely battlefields. Bierce fought at the Battle of Shiloh, an experience that became a source for several later short stories. In June 1864, he sustained a head wound at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. He was discharged from the army in January 1865 and his military career resumed, however, when in mid-1866 he rejoined General Hazen as part of the latters expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains. The expedition proceeded by horseback and wagon from Omaha, Nebraska, arriving toward years end in San Francisco, Bierce married Mary Ellen Mollie Day on December 25,1871. They had three children, sons Day and Leigh and daughter Helen, both of Bierces sons died before he did. Day committed suicide after a romantic rejection, and Leigh died of related to alcoholism. Bierce separated from his wife in 1888, after discovering compromising letters to her from an admirer, Mollie Day Bierce died the following year. He suffered from asthma, as well as complications from his war wounds
24.
Zealia Bishop
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Zealia Brown-Reed Bishop was an American writer of short stories. Her name is sometimes spelled Zelia, although she mostly wrote romantic fiction, she is remembered for three short horror stories she wrote in collaboration with H. P. Lovecraft. Among her works are three horror stories she wrote in collaboration with H. P. Lovecraft and her stories appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. However, they were revised by Lovecraft to the point of being ghostwritten. That on Lovecraft has been reprinted in Peter Cannons collection of essays on Lovecraft, Lovecraft Remembered, the three Lovecraft-Bishop revision stories also appear in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions. Bishops preference was for romantic fiction, of which she wrote and she lived in Kansas City with her husband D. W. Bishop, took an active role in the National Federation of Press Women, the New England Historic Genealogical Society and the Missouri Womens Press Club. She authored a series about Clay County, Missouri. In 2014, an unknown and unpublished cache of thirty-six letters from Lovecraft to Bishop was discovered. Her son, Sean McCall, found the letters following Mrs Fowlers death in 2014, a large manila envelope holding the letters was from Lovecrafts friend and collaborator, August Derleth, posted in August 1937. The envelope may have used to return manuscripts of letters which Zealia had sent him following Lovecrafts death. The letters have now published, with additional illustrative material. Sixty Years of Arkham House, A History and Bibliography, the Collectors Index to Weird Tales. Bowling Green, OH, Bowling Green State University Popular Press
25.
Algernon Blackwood
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Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator, S. T. Blackwood was born in Shooters Hill, and between 1871 and 1880 lived at Crayford Manor House, Crayford and was educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for various periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural and he was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote fourteen novels, several books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced. He was a lover of nature and the outdoors. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club and he never married, according to his friends he was a loner but also cheerful company. Jack Sullivan stated that Blackwoods life parallels his work more neatly than perhaps that of any other ghost story writer, Blackwood was a member of one of the factions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as was his contemporary Arthur Machen. Cabalistic themes influence his novel The Human Chord and his two best known stories are probably The Willows and The Wendigo. He would also write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written. Though Blackwood wrote a number of stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness, I believe it possible for our consciousness to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a new universe. A change in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is something more than an extension of what we already possess. Blackwood wrote an autobiography of his years, Episodes Before Thirty. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was of cerebral thrombosis with arteriosclerosis as contributory and he was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, H. P. Lovecraft included Blackwood as one of the Modern Masters in the section of that name in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Authors who have influenced by Blackwoods work include William Hope Hodgson, George Allan England. Lovecraft, H. Russell Wakefield, L. Adams Beck, Margery Lawrence, Evangeline Walton, Ramsey Campbell, frank Belknap Longs 1928 story The Space-Eaters alludes to Blackwoods fiction
26.
Nelson S. Bond
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Nelson Slade Bond was an American author who wrote extensively for books, magazines, radio, television and the stage. The 1998 recipient of the Nebula Author Emeritus award for achievement, Bond was a pioneer in early science fiction. His published fiction is mainly short stories, most of which appeared in magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. Many were published in Blue Book magazine and he is noted for his Lancelot Biggs series of stories and for his Meg the Priestess tales, which introduced one of the first powerful female characters in science fiction. Bonds parents, Richard Slade Bond and Mary Bond, were from Nova Scotia, the family later relocated to Philadelphia after World War I. In high school, Bond reviewed plays for The Philadelphia Inquirer and he worked for an insurance company during the Great Depression before enrolling in a college. He attended Marshall College in Huntington, West Virginia from 1932 to 1934, while at Marshall, he contributed to the Huntington Herald Advertiser and edited the college newspaper, The Parthenon. He met his wife, Betty Gough Folsom, while at Marshall. After graduating, Bond briefly worked for his fathers public relations agency, shortly after joining, he was offered the position of public relations field director for the province of Nova Scotia. This involved meeting celebrities visiting the province and writing pieces about them that were placed in various periodicals and he started selling fiction when he realised he could make more money by writing, sending works to newspapers, pulp magazines and the more upmarket slick magazines. He started by writing sports stories but made his first significant sale with Mr. Mergenthwerkers Lobblies and his first science fiction story was Down the Dimensions in the April 1937 issue of Astounding. He only wrote occasional non-fiction once he was established as an author of fiction, Bond wrote and sold more for Blue Book than the pulps, which was not only more prestigious but paid more for his work. He also published articles on philately and served on the Board of Governors / Board of Directors of the British North America Philatelic Society, Bond wrote for such radio programs as Dr. Christian, Hot Copy and The Sheriff, a continuation of Death Valley Days. Bond also scripted for numerous television programs, such as Lux Video Theatre, Studio One, General Motors Theatre. Mr. Mergenthwirkers Lobblies was adapted to radio at least a half-dozen times, after Bond scripted the story as a teleplay, it became the first full-length play presented on network television. It was televised three times - on Broadway Previews, The Philco Television Playhouse and the Kraft Television Theatre, for Locus Bond described his experiences in radio and TV, I began writing for radio after they started adapting some of my stories. I thought, Well, hell, I can do better than that, after a while, a couple of series opened up, and they asked me to become the writer. I wrote 52 weeks of Hot Copy and about 26 weeks of The Sheriff show, I had just written Mr. Mergenthwirkers Lobblies as a radio series, and I adapted it for television
27.
Max Brod
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Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jew, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend. As Kafkas literary executor, Brod refused to follow the instructions to burn his lifes work. Kafka would probably not be famous without Brods help, Max Brod was born in Prague, then part of the province of Bohemia in Austria-Hungary, now the capital of the Czech Republic. At the age of four, Brod was diagnosed with a spinal curvature and spent a year in corrective harness. From 1912, he was a pronounced Zionist and when Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918, from 1924, already an established writer, he worked as a critic for the Prager Tagblatt. In 1939, as the Nazis took over Prague, Brod and he settled in Tel Aviv, where he continued to write and worked as a dramaturg for Habimah, later the Israeli national theatre, for 30 years. For a period following the death of his wife in 1942 and he would later pass stewardship of the Kafka materials in his possession to Esther in his will. He was additionally supported by his close companion Felix Weltsch and their friendship lasted 75 years, from the elementary school of the Piarists in Prague to Weltschs death in 1964. Brod died on December 20,1968 in Tel Aviv, unlike Kafka, Brod rapidly became a prolific, successful published writer who eventually published 83 titles. His first novel and fourth overall, Schloss Nornepygge, published in 1908 when he was only 24, was celebrated in Berlin literary circles as a masterpiece of expressionism. This and other works made Brod a well-known personality in German-language literature, in 1913, together with Weltsch, he published the work Anschauung und Begriff which made him more famous in Berlin and also in Leipzig, where their publisher Kurt Wolff worked. He unselfishly promoted other writers and musicians, among his protégés was Franz Werfel, whom he would later fall out with as Werfel abandoned Judaism for Christianity. He would also write at various times both for and against Karl Kraus, a convert from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. His critical endorsement would be crucial to the popularity of Jaroslav Hašeks The Good Soldier Svejk, Brod first met Kafka on October 23,1902, when both were students at Charles University. Brod had given a lecture at the German students hall on Arthur Schopenhauer, Kafka, one year older, addressed him after the lecture and accompanied him home. He tended to participate in all the meetings, but up to then we had hardly considered each other, the quiet Kafka would have been. Even his elegant, usually dark-blue, suits were inconspicuous and reserved like him, at that time, however, something seems to have attracted him to me, he was more open than usual, filling the endless walk home by disagreeing strongly with my all too rough formulations
28.
Charles Brockden Brown
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Charles Brockden Brown was an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period. He is generally regarded by scholars as the most important American novelist before James Fenimore Cooper and he is the most frequently studied and republished practitioner of the early American novel, or the US novel between 1789 and roughly 1820. Brown was born on January 17,1771, the fourth of five brothers and his father Elijah Brown, originally from Chester County, Pennsylvania, just southwest of Philadelphia, had a variable career primarily as a land-conveyancer or agent in real estate transactions. The two oldest brothers, Joseph and James, and youngest brother Elijah, Jr. were import-export merchants, Brown became a reluctant partner of their short-lived family re-export firm, James Brown & Co. from late 1800 to the firms dissolution during 1806. The third brother, Armitt, was a clerk in the early 1790s for the Treasury department and at the Bank of Pennsylvania, Browns family intended for him to become a lawyer. After six years in Philadelphia at the law office of Alexander Wilcocks and he became part of a group of young, New York-based intellectuals who helped begin his literary career. His first publications appeared during the late 1780s, but generally he published little during this period, by 1798, however, these formative years gave way to a period of novel-writing during which Brown published the titles for which he is best known. During a novelistic phase that lasted from 1798 until late 1801, Brown published the Wollstonecraftian-feminist dialog Alcuin, an additional novel was written, but was lost by a series of mishaps and consequently never saw publication. Browns novels are often characterized simply as gothic fiction, although the model he develops is far from the Gothic romance mode of writers such as Ann Radcliffe, Browns novels combine several revolutionary-era fiction subgenres with other types of late-Enlightenment scientific and medical knowledge. Brown builds plots around particular motifs such as sleepwalking and religious mania, of the seven novels extant, the first four to be published in book form have received the lions share of commentary and attention. Because of their violence, dramatic intensity, and intellectual complexity. Recent scholarship, however, has revised this view and emphasizes the continuities. Brown articulates a well-defined technique and plan for his novel-writing in essays such as Walsteins School of History and The Difference Between History and Romance. Browns lifelong support for feminism, for example, originates both from his Quaker background, and from his commitment to the late-Enlightenment ideals of the revolutionary era. Brown shares with the British radical-democrats an emphasis on sociocultural determinism, as Brown indicates in the Walsteins School of History essay, two primary topics of drama of his novelistic plots are sex and property. After 1801 Brown continued to publish prolifically and he authored several important political pamphlets arguing for the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory and against the Embargo Act of 1807. The latter is notable for the book-length Annals of Europe and America and he also published miscellaneous pieces in other Philadelphia newspapers and magazines of the 19th century including the Aurora and, in 1809, the Port-Folio. Although it was never completed, Brown planned from 1803 to 1806, with close friend Thomas Pym Cope, benjamin Rush recommended Brown in 1803 as an ideal author for a history of penal reform in Philadelphia
29.
Arthur J. Burks
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Arthur J. Burks was an American writer and a Marine colonel. Burks was born to a family in Waterville, Washington. He married Blanche Fidelia Lane on March 23,1918 in Sacramento, California and was the father of four children, Phillip Charles, Wasle Carmen, Arline Mary and he served in the United States Marine Corps in World War I, and began writing in 1920. After being stationed in the Caribbean and inspired by the voodoo rituals. In 1928 he resigned from the Marine Corps and began writing full-time and he became one of the million-word-a-year men in the pulp magazines by virtue of his tremendous output. He wrote in the neighborhood of 800 stories for the pulps and he was well known for being able to take any household object that someone would suggest to him on a dare, and instantly generate a plot based around it. His byline was commonplace on pulp covers and he wrote primarily in the genres of aviation, detective, adventure, sports, and weird menace. Two genres he was not to be found in were love, the pressure of producing so much fiction caused him to ease off in the late-1930s. He returned to duty as the U. S. entered World War II. Burks moved to Paradise in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1948, throughout the 60s, he wrote many works on metaphysics and the paranormal. In his later years, he lectured on paranormal activities and gave readings, the Splendid Half Caste Walter Garvin in Mexico Rivers Into Wilderness Land of Checkerboard Families Here Are My People The Great Amen Who Do You Think You Are. Burks, Volume #1 Jones, Robert Kenneth, pulp Fictioneers, Adventures in the Storytelling Business. Pulpwood Days, Volume 1, Editors You Want to Know, taking Haiti, Military Occupation and the Culture of U. S. Imperialism. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy
30.
Dino Buzzati
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Dino Buzzati-Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is due to his novel The Tartar Steppe. Buzzati was born at San Pellegrino, Belluno, in his familys ancestral villa, Buzzatis mother, a veterinarian by profession, was Venetian and his father, a professor of international law, was from an old Bellunese family. Buzzati was the second of his parents four children, one of his brothers was the well-known Italian geneticist Adriano Buzzati-Traverso. In 1924, he enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Milan, as he was completing his studies in law, he was hired, at the age of 22, by the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he would remain until his death. He began in the department, and later worked as a reporter, special correspondent, essayist, editor. It is often said that his journalistic background informs his writing, lending even the most fantastic tales an aura of realism, Buzzati himself comments on the connection, It seems to me, fantasy should be as close as possible to journalism. The right word is not banalizing, although in fact a little of this is involved, rather, I mean that the effectiveness of a fantastic story will depend on its being told in the most simple and practical terms. During World War II, Buzzati served in Africa, as a journalist attached to the Regia Marina, after the end of the war, Il deserto dei Tartari was published Italy-wide and quickly brought critical recognition and fame to the author. He married Almerina Antoniazzi in 1966, which also marked release of his last novel, in 1972, Buzzati died of cancer after a protracted illness. Buzzati began writing fiction in 1933 and his works of fiction include five novels, theatre and radio plays, librettos, numerous books of short stories and poetry. His librettos include four for operas by Luciano Chailly, as well as that of the opera La giacca dannata by Giulio Viozzi and he wrote a childrens book La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia. Lemony Snicket wrote an introduction and readers companion to a 2005 English edition, also an acclaimed and exhibited artist, Buzzati also combined his artistic and writerly exploits into making a comic book based on the myth of Orpheus, Poem Strip. The Tartar Steppe, his most famous novel, tells the story of a military outpost that awaits a Tartar invasion, in its sentiment and its conclusions, it has been compared to existentialist works, notably Albert Camuss The Myth of Sisyphus. His writing is sometimes cited as magical realism, social alienation, and he has also written a variety of short stories featuring fantastic animals such as the bogeyman and, his own invention, the colomber. His best works are regarded in France but little known in English. Luis Montiel, “Una meditatio mortis contemporánea, La reflexión de Dino Buzzati sobre la caducidad de la vida humana”. Dino Buzzatis official website Biography on IMDb Biography at the Wayback Machine Il coraggio della bontà – Dino Buzzati e don Zeno Saltini, cronaca di unamicizia
31.
Lord Byron
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George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet, peer, politician, and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among his best-known works are the narrative poems, Don Juan and Childe Harolds Pilgrimage. Byron is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential and he travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years with the struggling poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in his life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi, ethel Colburn Mayne states that George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788 in a house on 24 Holles Street in London. However, Robert Charles Dallas in his Recollections states that Byron was born in Dover and he was the son of Captain John Mad Jack Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon, a descendant of Cardinal Beaton and heiress of the Gight estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Byrons father had seduced the married Marchioness of Carmarthen and, after she divorced her husband. His treatment of her was described as brutal and vicious, in order to claim his second wifes estate in Scotland, Byrons father took the additional surname Gordon, becoming John Byron Gordon, and he was occasionally styled John Byron Gordon of Gight. Byron himself used this surname for a time and was registered at school in Aberdeen as George Byron Gordon, at the age of 10, he inherited the English Barony of Byron of Rochdale, becoming Lord Byron, and eventually dropped the double surname. Byrons paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral the Hon. John Foulweather Jack Byron, vice Admiral John Byron had circumnavigated the globe, and was the younger brother of the 5th Baron Byron, known as the Wicked Lord. He was christened, at St Marylebone Parish Church, George Gordon Byron after his maternal grandfather George Gordon of Gight, a descendant of James I of Scotland, Mad Jack Byron married his second wife for the same reason that he married his first, her fortune. In a move to avoid his creditors, Catherine accompanied her husband to France in 1786. He was born on 22 January in lodgings at Holles Street in London, Catherine moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790, where Byron spent his childhood. His father soon joined them in their lodgings in Queen Street, Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy, which could be partly explained by her husbands continuing to borrow money from her. As a result, she fell even further into debt to support his demands and it was one of these importunate loans that allowed him to travel to Valenciennes, France, where he died in 1791. When Byrons great-uncle, the wicked Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, described as a woman without judgment or self-command, Catherine either spoiled and indulged her son or vexed him with her capricious stubbornness. Her drinking disgusted him, and he often mocked her for being short and corpulent and she once retaliated and, in a fit of temper, referred to him as a lame brat. Langley-Moore questions the Galt claim that she over-indulged in alcohol, upon the death of Byrons mother-in-law Judith Noel, the Hon
32.
Leonora Carrington
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Leonora Carrington OBE was an English-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her life in Mexico City, and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Leonora Carrington was also a member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s. Carrington was born in Clayton Green, Chorley, Lancashire, England and her father was a wealthy textile manufacturer, and her mother, Maureen, was Irish. She had three brothers, Patrick, Gerald, and Arthur, in 1927, at the age of ten, she saw her first Surrealist painting in a Left Bank gallery and later met many Surrealists, including Paul Éluard. Her father opposed her career as an artist, but her mother encouraged her and she returned to England and was presented at Court, but according to her, she brought a copy of Aldous Huxleys Eyeless in Gaza to read instead. In 1935, she attended the Chelsea School of Art in London for one year, some works are still hanging at James former family home, currently West Dean College in West Dean, West Sussex. When she returned to Britain, she enrolled in the art school established by the French modernist Amédée Ozenfant. In 1936, Leonora saw the work of the German surrealist Max Ernst at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London and was attracted to the Surrealist artist before she met him. In 1937, Carrington met Ernst at a party held in London, the artists bonded and returned together to Paris, where Ernst promptly separated from his wife. In 1938, leaving Paris, they settled in Saint Martin dArdèche in southern France, the new couple collaborated and supported each others artistic development. The two artists created sculptures of animals to decorate their home in Saint Martin dArdèche. In 1939, Carrington painted a portrait of Max Ernst, as a tribute to their relationship, the portrait was her first Surrealist work, and it was called The Inn of the Dawn. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the person in the painting is a cross between a male and a female, who is seated in a room with a rocking horse on the wall. Carrington had a an interest in animals, myth, and symbolism and this interest became stronger when she moved to Mexico and started a relationship with the émigré Spanish artist Remedios Varo. The two studied alchemy, the kabbalah, and the mytho-historical writings Popol Vuh- known today as Guatemala, with the outbreak of World War II Ernst, who was German, was arrested by the French authorities for being a hostile alien. With the intercession of Paul Éluard, and other friends, including the American journalist Varian Fry, soon after the Nazis invaded France, Ernst was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo, because his art was considered by the Nazis to be degenerate. He managed to escape and, leaving Carrington behind, fled to America with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, after Ernsts arrest, Carrington was devastated and fled to Spain
33.
Lewis Carroll
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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life. Dodgsons family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections, conservative, most of Dodgsons male ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergy. His great-grandfather, also named Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become the Bishop of Elphin. His paternal grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, the older of these sons – yet another Charles Dodgson – was Carrolls father. He went to Westminster School and then to Christ Church, Oxford and he reverted to the other family tradition and took holy orders. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career, instead, he married his first cousin Frances Jane Lutwidge in 1830 and became a country parson. Dodgson was born in the parsonage at Daresbury in Cheshire near the towns of Warrington and Runcorn. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in North Yorkshire, and this remained their home for the next 25 years. He was High Church, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism, an admirer of John Henry Newman and the Tractarian movement, Young Charles was to develop an ambiguous relationship with his fathers values and with the Church of England as a whole. During his early youth, Dodgson was educated at home and his reading lists preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect, at the age of seven, he was reading books such as The Pilgrims Progress. He also suffered from a stammer – a condition shared by most of his siblings – that often influenced his life throughout his years. At the age of twelve, he was sent to Richmond Grammar School at nearby Richmond, in 1846, Dodgson entered Rugby School where he was evidently unhappy, as he wrote some years after leaving, I cannot say. That any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again, I can honestly say that if I could have been. Secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear, scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. I have not had a promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby. He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and matriculated at Oxford in May 1850 as a member of his fathers old college, after waiting for rooms in college to become available, he went into residence in January 1851. He had been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home and his mother had died of inflammation of the brain – perhaps meningitis or a stroke – at the age of 47
34.
Robert W. Chambers
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Robert William Chambers was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories entitled The King in Yellow, published in 1895. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to William P. Chambers, a corporate and bankruptcy lawyer and his parents met when Caroline was twelve years old and William P. was interning with her father, Joseph Boughton, a prominent corporate lawyer. Eventually the two formed the law firm of Chambers and Boughton which continued to prosper even after Josephs death in 1861. Roberts great-grandfather, William Chambers, a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy, was married to Amelia Saunders, the couple moved from Westerly, to Greenfield, Massachusetts and then to Galway, New York, where their son, also William Chambers, was born. The second William graduated from Union College at the age of 18, and then went to a college in Boston, where he studied to be a doctor. Upon graduating, he and his wife, Eliza P. Allen, a descendant of Roger Williams. His brother was architect Walter Boughton Chambers, Robert was first educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and then entered the Art Students League at around the age of twenty, where the artist Charles Dana Gibson was his fellow student. Chambers studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and at Académie Julian, in Paris from 1886 to 1893, on his return to New York, he succeeded in selling his illustrations to Life, Truth, and Vogue magazines. Then, for unclear, he devoted his time to writing, producing his first novel. His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is The King in Yellow and this included several famous weird short stories which are connected by the theme of a fictitious drama of the same title, which drives those who read it insane. E. F. Bleiler described The King in Yellow as one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction and it was also strongly admired by H. P. Lovecraft and his circle. Chambers returned to the genre in his later short story collections The Maker of Moons, The Mystery of Choice and The Tree of Heaven. Some of Chamberss work contains elements of fiction, such as In Search of the Unknown. About a zoologist who encounters monsters, Chambers later turned to writing romantic fiction to earn a living. According to some estimates, Chambers had one of the most successful careers of his period, his later novels selling well. Many of his works were also serialized in magazines and his novel The Man They Hanged was about Captain Kidd, and argued that Kidd was not a pirate, and had been made a scapegoat by the British government. During World War I he wrote war adventure novels and war stories, some of which showed a return to his old weird style. After 1924 he devoted solely to writing historical fiction
35.
Hugh B. Cave
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Hugh Barnett Cave was an American writer of various genres, perhaps best remembered for his works of horror, weird menace and science fiction. He used a variety of pen names, notably Justin Case under which name he created the antihero The Eel, starting in the 1970s Cave enjoyed a resurgence in popularity when Karl Edward Wagners Carcosa Press published Murgunstrumm and Others, the first hardcover collection of Caves pulp stories. Cave relocated to Florida and regularly published original material until about the year 2000, born in Chester, England, Hugh B. Cave relocated during his childhood with his family to Boston, Massachusetts and his first name was in honor of Hugh Walpole, a favorite author of his mother, a nurse, who had once known Rudyard Kipling. After graduating, Cave attended Boston University on a scholarship but had to leave when his father was severely injured and he worked initially for a self-publishing press, the only regular job he would ever have. He quit this position at age 20 to write for a living, from 1932 until his death during 1997, Cave corresponded extensively with fellow pulp writer Carl Richard Jacobi. Selections of this correspondence can be found in Caves memoir Magazines I Remember, during the 1930s, Cave lived in Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, but he never met H. P. Lovecraft, who lived in nearby Providence, the two engaged in a debate by correspondence regarding the ethics and aesthetics of writing for the pulp magazines. At least two of Caves stories are associated with Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos – The Isle of Dark Magic, during World War II Cave travelled as a reporter around the Pacific Ocean area and in Southeast Asia. Soon after the war he relocated to the Caribbean area, spending five years in Haiti, after which he rebuilt and he returned to the United States during the early 1970s after the Jamaican government confiscated his plantation. Hugh Cave was married twice, first to Margaret Long in a union that produced two sons before the couple began living apart, and to Peggy Thompson, who died during 2001, Cave was 93 when he died in Vero Beach, Florida on 27 June 2004. A biography of Cave entitled Pulp Mans Odyssey, The Hugh B, Cave Story by Audrey Parente was published by Starmont House during 1988. During his early career he contributed to such magazines as Astounding, Black Mask. By his own estimate, during the 1930s alone, he published approximately 800 short stories in nearly 100 periodicals using various pseudonyms, such as James Pitt and Margaret Hullinwall. Of particular interest during this time was his series featuring an independent gentleman of courageous action and these adventures were published during the late 1930s and early 40s with the pseudonym Justin Case. Cave was also one of the most successful contributors to the weird menace or shudder pulps of the 1930s. During 1943, drawing on his experience as a war reporter, he authored one of his works, Long Were The Nights. He also wrote a number of books about the war in the Pacific area during this period
36.
Irvin S. Cobb
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Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb was an American author, humorist, editor and columnist from Paducah, Kentucky who relocated to New York in 1904, living there for the remainder of his life. He wrote for the New York World, Joseph Pulitzers newspaper, Cobb also wrote more than 60 books and 300 short stories. Some of his works were adapted for silent movies, several of his Judge Priest short stories were adapted in the 1930s for two feature films directed by John Ford. Cobb was the second of four born to Kentucky natives in Paducah. His maternal grandfather, Reuben Saunders, M. D. is credited with discovering in 1873 that hypodermic use of morphine-atropine halted cholera, Cobb was raised in Paducah, and the events and people of his childhood became the basis for much of his later works. Later in life, Cobb was nicknamed Duke of Paducah, Cobb was educated in public and private elementary schools, and then entered William A. Cades Academy intending to pursue a law career. When Cobb was 16, his became an alcoholic, after the death of his grandfather. Forced to quit school and find work, Cobb began his writing career, Cobb started in journalism with the Paducah Daily News at age seventeen, and became the nations youngest managing news editor at age nineteen. He later worked at the Louisville Evening Post for a year and his anecdotal memoir-cum-autobiography, Exit Laughing, published in 1941, includes a firsthand account of the assassination of Kentucky Governor William Goebel in 1900 and the trials of the killers. He wrote numerous series in periodicals, and also collaborated on dramatic productions, after moving to New York in 1904, Cobb was hired by the Evening Sun. The publication sent him to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to cover the Russian-Japanese peace conference and his dispatches from the negotiations, emphasizing the personalities involved, were published across the country with the title Making Peace at Portsmouth. They earned him a job offer from Joseph Pulitzers New York World, Cobb joined the staff of the magazine The Saturday Evening Post in 1911, and covered the Great War for the magazine. At the same time, he wrote a book about his experiences, published in 1915, the three-page article and half-page photograph reached a national audience of more than two million readers, and was widely reprinted in the black press. In the midst of covering the 1920 Democratic Convention, Cobb received 1.5 votes on the 23rd Presidential ballot, several of Cobbs stories were adapted as silent movies. He also wrote the titles for other movies, including the Jackie Coogan movie. With the advent of sound, more of his stories were adapted for the screen, including The Woman Accused, John Ford twice made movies based on Cobbs Judge Priest stories, Judge Priest featured Will Rogers in the title role. The Sun Shines Bright was based on his short stories The Sun Shines Bright, The Mob from Massac, Cobb also had an acting career, acting in ten movies between 1932 and 1938. He won major roles in movies as Pepper, Everybodys Old Man
37.
Ralph Adams Cram
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Ralph Adams Cram was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partnerships in which he worked, together with an architect and artist, he is honored on December 16 as a feast day in the Episcopal Church of the United States. Cram was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Cram was born on December 16,1863 at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire to the Rev. William Augustine and Sarah Elizabeth Cram. He was educated at Augusta, Hampton Falls, Westford Academy, which he entered in 1875, and Exeter. At age 18, Cram moved to Boston in 1881 and worked for five years in the office of Rotch & Tilden. During an 1887 Christmas Eve mass in Rome, he had a conversion experience. For the rest of his life, he practiced as a fervent Anglo-Catholic who identified as High Church Anglican, in the 1890s, Cram was a key figure in social-controversial-inspirational groups including the Pewter Mugs and the Visionists. In 1900, Cram married Elizabeth Carrington Read at New Bedford and she was the daughter of Clement Carrington Read and his wife. Read had served as a captain in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, Elizabeth and Ralph had three children, Mary Carrington Cram, Ralph Wentworth Cram and Elizabeth Strudwick Cram. The family burial site is at the St. Elizabeths Memorial Churchyard, the churchyard is adjacent to St Elizabeths Chapel, which Cram designed. Cram and business partner Charles Wentworth started business in Boston in April 1889 as Cram and they had landed only four or five church commissions before they were joined by Bertram Goodhue in 1892 to form Cram, Wentworth and Goodhue. Goodhue brought a commission in Dallas and brilliant drafting skills to the Boston office. Wentworth died in 1897 and the name changed to Cram. Cram and Goodhue complemented each others strengths at first but began to compete, the firm won design of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1902, a major milestone in their career. They set up the firms New York office, where Goodhue would preside, Crams acceptance of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine commission in 1911 heightened the tension between the two. Architectural historians have attributed most of their projects to one partner or the other, based on the visual and compositional style, the Gothic Revival Saint Thomas Church was designed by them both in 1914 on Manhattans Fifth Avenue. It is the last example of their collaboration, and the most integrated, Goodhue began his solo career on August 14,1913. Cram and Ferguson continued with major church and college commissions through the 1930s, particularly important work includes the original campus of Rice University, Houston, as well as the library and first city hall of that city
38.
Francis Marion Crawford
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Francis Marion Crawford was an American writer noted for his many novels, especially those set in Italy, and for his classic weird and fantastic stories. He studied successively at St Pauls School, Concord, New Hampshire, Cambridge University, University of Heidelberg, in 1879 he went to India, where he studied Sanskrit and edited in Allahabad The Indian Herald. Returning to America in February 1881, he continued to study Sanskrit at Harvard University for a year, early in 1882 he established his lifelong close friendship with Isabella Stewart Gardner. During this period he lived most of the time in Boston at his Aunt Julia Ward Howes house and in the company of his Uncle and his family was concerned about his financial prospects. His mother had hoped he could train in Boston for a career as an operatic baritone based on his renditions of Schubert lieder. In January 1882, George Henschel, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, assess his prospects and his Uncle Sam Ward suggested he try writing about his years in India and helped him develop contacts with New York publishers. In December 1882 he produced his first novel, Mr Isaacs and it had an immediate success, and Dr Claudius followed promptly. In May 1883 he returned to Italy, where he made his permanent home and he lived at the historic Hotel Cocumella in Sorrento during 1885 and settled permanently in Sant Agnello, where in the fall he bought the Villa Renzi that became Villa Crawford. More than half his novels are set in Italy and he wrote three long historical studies of Italy and was well advanced with a history of Rome in the Middle Ages when he died. This may explain why Marion Crawfords books stand apart from any distinctively American current in literature, in October 1884 he married Elizabeth Berdan, the daughter of the American Civil War Union General Hiram Berdan. They had two sons and two daughters, year by year Crawford published a number of successful novels. Late in the 1890s, he began to write his historical works, in these, his intimate knowledge of local Italian history combines with the romanticists imaginative faculty to excellent effect. His shorter book Constantinople belongs to this category, in The Novel, What It Is, he defended his literary approach, self-conceived as a combination of romanticism and realism, defining the art form in terms of its marketplace and audience. The novel, he wrote, is a commodity and intellectual artistic luxury that must amuse, indeed. Its intention is to amuse and please, and certainly not to teach and preach, the Saracinesca series is perhaps known to be his best work, with the third in the series, Don Orsino set against the background of a real estate bubble, told with effective concision. The second volume is Sant Ilario, Crawford ended Rulers of the South with a chapter about the Sicilian Mafia. Crawford himself was fondest of Khaled, A Tale of Arabia, a story of a genie who becomes human, Crawfords best known dramatization was that of The White Sister. Its main actress was Viola Allen, whose first film was the 1915 film of this novel, in the Palace of the King was filmed in 1915 and 1923, Mr. Isaacs was filmed in 1931 as Son of India
39.
Walter de la Mare
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Walter John de la Mare OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist. His 1921 novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, De la Mare was born in Kent at 83 Maryon Road, Charlton, partly descended from a family of French Huguenots, and was educated at St Pauls Cathedral School. He was born to James Edward de la Mare, a principal at the Bank of England, the suggestion that Lucy was related to poet Robert Browning has been found to be incorrect. He had two brothers, Francis Arthur Edward and James Herbert, and four sisters Florence Mary, Constance Eliza, Ethel, De la Mare preferred to be known as Jack by his family and friends as he disliked the name Walter. He worked from 1890 in the department of the London office of Standard Oil for eighteen years to support his family. In 1908, through the efforts of Sir Henry Newbolt he received a Civil List pension which enabled him to concentrate on writing. In 1892 de la Mare joined the Esperanza Amateur Dramatics Club where he met and fell in love with Elfrida Ingpen, the leading lady, who was ten years older than he. They were married on 4 August 1899 and they went on to have four children, Richard Herbert Ingpen, Colin, Florence, the new family lived in Beckenham and Anerley from 1899 till 1924. It was in Beckenham at Mackenzie Road that the children were born, his first book of poems Songs of Childhood published and their house at Anerley in south London was the scene of many parties, notable for imaginative games of charades. In 1940, his wife Elfrida was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease and spent the rest of her life as an invalid, eventually dying in 1943. From 1940 until his death, de la Mare lived in South End House, Montpelier Row, Twickenham, for the Collected Stories for Children, he won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the years best childrens book by a British subject. It was the first collection to win the award, De la Mare suffered from a coronary thrombosis in 1947 and died of another in 1956. He spent his final year mostly bed-ridden, being cared for by a nurse whom he loved and his ashes are buried in the crypt of St Pauls Cathedral, where he had once been a choirboy. De la Mare described two types of imagination – although aspects might be a better term, the childlike. It was at the border between the two that Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest of the great poets lay, De la Mare claimed that all children fall into the category of having a childlike imagination at first, which is usually replaced at some point in their lives. He explained in the lecture Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination that children are not bound in by their groping senses, facts to them are the liveliest of chameleons. They are contemplatives, solitaries, fakirs, who sink again and again out of the noise and fever of existence and his biographer Doris Ross McCrosson summarises this passage, Children are, in short, visionaries. This visionary view of life can be seen as either vital creativity and ingenuity, the increasing intrusions of the external world upon the mind, however, frighten the childlike imagination, which retires like a shocked snail into its shell
