Algernon Blackwood (Algernon Henry Blackwood) Biography

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British writer of ghost stories and novels, born in Kent, educated at Edinburgh University. He travelled widely and worked as a journalist in New York—a period reflected in Episodes before Thirty (1923). He gained considerable success with his first collections, The Empty House (1906) and The Listener (1907), and was encouraged by H. Belloc. His interest in the occult and his expressive pantheism generated a series of highly original nature tales, whose ghostly protagonists were manifestations of natural forces. He wrote more than thirty books which include Pan's Garden (1910), The Lost Valley (1910), Incredible Adventures (1914), Day and Night Stories (1917), Strange Stories (1929), and Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (1949).