A. Merritt
Encyclopedia
Abraham Grace Merritt — known by his byline, A. Merritt — was an American
editor and author of works of fantastic fiction
.
, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
in 1894. Originally trained in law
, he turned to journalism
, first as a correspondent and later as editor. He was assistant editor of The American Weekly
from 1912 to 1937 under Morrill Goddard, then its editor from 1937 until his death. As editor, he hired the unheralded new artists Virgil Finlay
and Hannes Bok
and promoted the work done on polio by Sister Elizabeth Kenny
.
His fiction was only a sideline to his journalism career, which might explain his relatively low output. One of the best-paid journalists of his era, Merritt made $25,000 per year by 1919, and at the end of his life was earning $100,000 yearly—exceptional sums for the period. His financial success allowed him to pursue world travel—he invested in real estate in Jamaica
and Ecuador
—and exotic hobbies, like cultivating orchids and plants linked to witchcraft
, magic
(monkshood, wolfbane, blue datura
, peyote
, and cannabis
).
Merritt married twice, once in the 1910s to Eleanore Ratcliffe, with whom he raised an adopted daughter, and again in the 1930s to Eleanor H. Johnson. He maintained an estate in Hollis Park Gardens on Long Island
, where he accumulated collections of weapons, carvings, and primitive masks from his travels, as well as a library of occult literature that reportedly exceeded 5000 volumes. He died suddenly of a heart attack, at his winter home in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, in 1943.
, Robert W. Chambers
, and Gertrude Barrows Bennett
(writing as Francis Stevens), with Merritt having "emulated Bennett's earlier style and themes." Merritt's stories typically revolve around conventional pulp magazine
themes: lost civilizations, hideous monsters, etc. His heroes are gallant Irishmen
or Scandinavia
ns, his villains treacherous Germans
or Russia
ns and his heroines often virginal, mysterious and scantily clad.
What sets Merritt apart from the typical pulp author, however, is his lush, florid prose style and his exhaustive, at times exhausting, penchant for adjective-laden detail. Merritt's fondness for micro-description nicely complements the pointillistic style of Bok's illustrations.
In 1917, he published his first fantasy
, "Through the Dragon Glass", in All-Story Weekly. This was followed by many more tales, including The People of the Pit (1918), The Moon Pool
(1919), The Metal Monster
(1920), The Face in the Abyss
(1923), The Ship of Ishtar
(1924), The Woman of the Wood (1926), Seven Footprints to Satan (1927), Burn Witch Burn! (1932), Dwellers in the Mirage
(1932), Creep, Shadow! (1934), and The Drone Man (1934).
He also contributed to the round robin story The Challenge from Beyond with Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard
, C. L. Moore
, and Frank Belknap Long
.
The Fox Woman and the Blue Pagoda (1946) combined an unfinished story with a conclusion written by Merritt's friend Hannes Bok. The Fox Woman and Other Stories (1949) collected the same fragment, minus Bok's conclusion, with Merritt's short stories. The book The Black Wheel was published in 1948, after Merritt's death; it was written by Bok using previously unpublished material as well.
and Richard Shaver, and highly esteemed by his friend and frequent collaborator Hannes Bok
, by then a noted SF illustrator. Michael Moorcock
and James Cawthorn list The Ship of Ishtar and Dwellers in the Mirage
as two of the novels in their book Fantasy:the 100 Best Books, describing the former book as Merritt "at the peak of his powers", and Merritt's work as a whole being full of "memorable images". In the Lensman
series by E.E. Smith, there is a reference to the novel "Dwellers in the Mirage" in which the protagonist Kimball Kinnison references the book and a quotation from it "Luka--turn your wheel so I need not slay this woman!"
People of the United States
The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
editor and author of works of fantastic fiction
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
.
Life
Born in Beverly, New JerseyBeverly, New Jersey
Beverly is a city in Burlington County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 2,577.Beverly was originally incorporated as a borough on March 5, 1850, within Willingboro Township...
, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
in 1894. Originally trained in law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, he turned to journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
, first as a correspondent and later as editor. He was assistant editor of The American Weekly
The American Weekly
The American Weekly was a United States magazine published by the Hearst Corporation from November 1, 1896, until 1966.A Sunday newspaper supplement which published many sensationalist stories, it was initially named The American Magazine but soon changed to The American Weekly. The name was...
from 1912 to 1937 under Morrill Goddard, then its editor from 1937 until his death. As editor, he hired the unheralded new artists Virgil Finlay
Virgil Finlay
Virgil Finlay was an American pulp fantasy, science fiction and horror illustrator. While he worked in a range of media, from gouache to oils, Finlay specialized in, and became famous for, detailed pen-and-ink drawings accomplished with abundant stippling, cross-hatching, and scratchboard techniques...
and Hannes Bok
Hannes Bok
Hannes Bok, pseudonym for Wayne Francis Woodard , was an American artist and illustrator, as well as an amateur astrologer and writer of fantasy fiction and poetry. He painted nearly 150 covers for various science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction magazines, as well as contributing hundreds...
and promoted the work done on polio by Sister Elizabeth Kenny
Elizabeth Kenny
Elizabeth Kenny was an unqualified Australian nurse who promoted a controversial new approach to the treatment of poliomyelitis in the era before mass vaccination eradicated the disease in most countries.-Youth:...
.
His fiction was only a sideline to his journalism career, which might explain his relatively low output. One of the best-paid journalists of his era, Merritt made $25,000 per year by 1919, and at the end of his life was earning $100,000 yearly—exceptional sums for the period. His financial success allowed him to pursue world travel—he invested in real estate in Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
and Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
—and exotic hobbies, like cultivating orchids and plants linked to witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
(monkshood, wolfbane, blue datura
Datura
Datura is a genus of nine species of vespertine flowering plants belonging to the family Solanaceae. Its precise and natural distribution is uncertain, owing to its extensive cultivation and naturalization throughout the temperate and tropical regions of the globe...
, peyote
Peyote
Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...
, and cannabis
Cannabis
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
).
Merritt married twice, once in the 1910s to Eleanore Ratcliffe, with whom he raised an adopted daughter, and again in the 1930s to Eleanor H. Johnson. He maintained an estate in Hollis Park Gardens on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, where he accumulated collections of weapons, carvings, and primitive masks from his travels, as well as a library of occult literature that reportedly exceeded 5000 volumes. He died suddenly of a heart attack, at his winter home in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, in 1943.
Writing
Merritt's writings were heavily influenced by H. Rider HaggardH. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
, Robert W. Chambers
Robert W. Chambers
Robert William Chambers was an American artist and writer.-Biography:He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to William P. Chambers , a famous lawyer, and Caroline Chambers , a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, Rhode Island...
, and Gertrude Barrows Bennett
Gertrude Barrows Bennett
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 been called "the woman who invented dark...
(writing as Francis Stevens), with Merritt having "emulated Bennett's earlier style and themes." Merritt's stories typically revolve around conventional pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
themes: lost civilizations, hideous monsters, etc. His heroes are gallant Irishmen
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
or Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
ns, his villains treacherous Germans
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
or Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
ns and his heroines often virginal, mysterious and scantily clad.
What sets Merritt apart from the typical pulp author, however, is his lush, florid prose style and his exhaustive, at times exhausting, penchant for adjective-laden detail. Merritt's fondness for micro-description nicely complements the pointillistic style of Bok's illustrations.
In 1917, he published his first fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
, "Through the Dragon Glass", in All-Story Weekly. This was followed by many more tales, including The People of the Pit (1918), The Moon Pool
The Moon Pool
The Moon Pool is a fantasy novel by Abraham Merritt . It originally appeared as two short stories in All-Story Weekly: "The Moon Pool" and its sequel, "Conquest of the Moon Pool" . These were then reworked into a novel released in 1919. The protagonist, Dr...
(1919), The Metal Monster
The Metal Monster
The Metal Monster is an Abraham Merritt fantasy novel. It was first serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1920 and features the return of Dr. Goodwin who first appeared in The Moon Pool....
(1920), The Face in the Abyss
The Face in the Abyss
The Face in the Abyss is a fantasy novel by A. Merritt. The novel is composed of a novelette with the same title and its sequel, "The Snake Mother". It was first published in its complete form in 1931 by Horace Liveright. The novelette "The Face in the Abyss" originally appeared in the magazine...
(1923), The Ship of Ishtar
The Ship of Ishtar
The Ship of Ishtar is a fantasy novel by A. Merritt. Originally published as a magazine serial in 1924, it has appeared in book form innumerable times.-Plot introduction:...
(1924), The Woman of the Wood (1926), Seven Footprints to Satan (1927), Burn Witch Burn! (1932), Dwellers in the Mirage
Dwellers in the Mirage
Dwellers in the Mirage is a fantasy novel by A. Merritt. It was first published in book form in 1932 by Horace Liveright. The novel was originally serialized in six parts in the magazine Argosy beginning with the January 23, 1932 issue....
(1932), Creep, Shadow! (1934), and The Drone Man (1934).
He also contributed to the round robin story The Challenge from Beyond with Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
, C. L. Moore
C. L. Moore
Catherine Lucille Moore was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, as C. L. Moore. She was one of the first women to write in the genre, and paved the way for many other female writers in speculative fiction....
, and Frank Belknap Long
Frank Belknap Long
Frank Belknap Long was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to...
.
The Fox Woman and the Blue Pagoda (1946) combined an unfinished story with a conclusion written by Merritt's friend Hannes Bok. The Fox Woman and Other Stories (1949) collected the same fragment, minus Bok's conclusion, with Merritt's short stories. The book The Black Wheel was published in 1948, after Merritt's death; it was written by Bok using previously unpublished material as well.
Reputation
Merritt was a major influence on H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
and Richard Shaver, and highly esteemed by his friend and frequent collaborator Hannes Bok
Hannes Bok
Hannes Bok, pseudonym for Wayne Francis Woodard , was an American artist and illustrator, as well as an amateur astrologer and writer of fantasy fiction and poetry. He painted nearly 150 covers for various science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction magazines, as well as contributing hundreds...
, by then a noted SF illustrator. Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
and James Cawthorn list The Ship of Ishtar and Dwellers in the Mirage
as two of the novels in their book Fantasy:the 100 Best Books, describing the former book as Merritt "at the peak of his powers", and Merritt's work as a whole being full of "memorable images". In the Lensman
Lensman
The Lensman series is a serial science fiction space opera by Edward Elmer "Doc" Smith. It was a runner-up for the Hugo award for best All-Time Series ....
series by E.E. Smith, there is a reference to the novel "Dwellers in the Mirage" in which the protagonist Kimball Kinnison references the book and a quotation from it "Luka--turn your wheel so I need not slay this woman!"
Adaptations
Merritt's work has been adapted numerous times in film and television. These include:- Seven Footprints to SatanSeven Footprints to Satan (film)Seven Footprints to Satan is a 1929 American dark comedy film directed by Danish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen. Based on the book of the same name by Abraham Merritt, it stars Thelma Todd, Creighton Hale, William V. Mong and Sheldon Lewis, and contains appearances by Sojin and Angelo Rossitto...
(1929), adapted from the novel of the same name and directed by Benjamin ChristensenBenjamin ChristensenBenjamin Christensen was a Danish film director, screenwriter and an actor both in film and on the stage. As a director he is most well known for the 1922 film Häxan and as an actor, he is best known for his performance in the film Michael , in which he plays Claude Zoret, the jilted lover of the...
. - The Devil-DollThe Devil-DollThe Devil-Doll is a horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring a cross-dressing Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O'Sullivan as his daughter, Lorraine Levond...
(1936) adapted from the novel Burn Witch Burn! and directed by Tod BrowningTod BrowningTod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras...
. - Muñecos infernales (1961) adapted from the novel Burn Witch Burn! and directed by Benito AlazrakiBenito AlazrakiBenito Alazraki was a Mexican film director and screenwriter. He directed 40 films between 1955 and 1995.-Selected filmography:* Roots * Muñecos infernales * Santo Contra los Zombis...
.
External links
- Abraham Merritt at Project Gutenberg AustraliaProject Gutenberg AustraliaProject Gutenberg Australia, abbreviated as PGA, is an Internet site which was founded in 2001 by Colin Choat. The site hosts free ebooks or e-texts which are in the public domain in Australia. The ebooks have been prepared and submitted by volunteers...
- Abraham Merritt at Locus MagazineLocus (magazine)Locus, subtitled "The Magazine Of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field", is published monthly in Oakland, California. It reports on the science fiction and fantasy publishing field, including comprehensive listings of all new books published in the genre. It is considered the news organ and trade...
's Index to Science Fiction - Abraham Merritt at the Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, Combined Edition
- Abraham Merritt at the FictionMags Index
- Abraham Merritt at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
- Abraham Merritt at Fantastic Fiction
- Abraham Merritt at the Open LibraryOpen LibraryOpen Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.-Books for the blind and...