W W Jacobs

Gebundenes Buch

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of W. W. Jacobs

Twenty-One Short Stories of the Strange and Unusual including 'The Monkey's Paw', 'The Brown Man's Servant', 'Sam's Ghost' and 'The Toll House'

Beschreibung

A special volume of tales of ghosts and horrors with an often nautical flavour Rarely is a story so well-known and highly regarded that it eclipses the identity of the author who was responsible for creating it. That may be true however of the macabre short story 'The Monkey's Paw'. Written in 1902, it tells of a charmed disembodied monkey paw which has the power to grant three wishes, one of which, imprudently made, unleashes an abomination. This famous story's author was, of course, William Wymark (W. W.) Jacobs, a British writer and native the dockland area of Wapping in London's East End, whose main body of work was humorous rather than horrific and whose particular taste, perhaps understandably, was for fiction that featured ships and their sailors. Nevertheless, Jacobs penned a respectable collection of chilling supernatural short stories during his long career, In addition to the indispensable 'The Monkeys Paw', readers will discover 'In Mid-Atlantic', 'Over the Side', 'The Ghost of Jerry Bundler' (which was also performed on the stage), 'The Well', 'The Interruption' and many other stories to entertain and send a shiver down the spine of the reader. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

Autor

William Wymark Jacobs was an English writer of short fiction and play. He is best known for his novella "The Monkey's Paw". He was born in 1863 at 5, Crombie's Row, Mile End Old Town (not Wapping, as is commonly said), London, to William Gage Jacobs, a wharf manager, and his wife Sophia. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "the young Jacobs spent much time on Thames-side, growing familiar with the life of the neighbourhood" and "ran wild in Wapping" since his father managed the South Devon wharf in Lower East Smithfield, by the St Katherine Docks. William and his siblings were young when their mother died. Their father later married his housekeeper and had seven additional children. In 1879, Jacobs started working as a clerk at the Post Office Savings Bank. By 1885, he had published his first short story, but success was delayed. In 1898, Arnold Bennett was surprised to learn that Jacobs had turned down £50 for six short stories. He was financially stable enough to leave the post office in 1899.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Leonaur Ltd
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. August 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 222mm x 145mm x 17mm
• Gewicht: 524g
• ISBN-13: 9781782828143
• ISBN-10: 1782828141
• Artikelnr.: 57622405