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John Collier (fiction writer)

March 08, 2023

John Henry Noyes Collier (3 May 1901 – 6 April 1980) was a British-born writer and screenwriter best known for his short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1950s. Most were collected in The John Collier Reader (Knopf, 1972); earlier collections include a 1951 volume, Fancies and Goodnights, which won the International Fantasy Award and remains in print. Individual stories are frequently anthologized in fantasy collections. John Collier's writing has been praised by authors such as Anthony Burgess, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Wyndham Lewis, and Paul Theroux. He appears to have given few interviews in his life; those include conversations with biographer Betty Richardson, Tom Milne, and Max Wilk.

John Collier
John Collier, c. 1970s
Born(1901-05-03)3 May 1901
London, UK
Died6 April 1980(1980-04-06) (aged 78)
Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
OccupationShort story writer, screenplay writer
NationalityBritish

Life

Born in London in 1901, John Collier was the son of John George and Emily Mary Noyes Collier. He had one sister, Kathleen Mars Collier. His father, John George Collier, was one of seventeen children, and could not afford formal education; he worked as a clerk. Nor could John George afford schooling for his son beyond prep school; John Collier and Kathleen were educated at home.[1] He was privately educated by his uncle Vincent Collier, a novelist.[2] Biographer Betty Richardson wrote:

He began reading Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales at three; these began a lifelong interest in myth and legend that was further stimulated when, in his teens, he discovered James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890-1915). An uncle, Vincent Collier, himself a minor novelist, introduced the boy to 17th and 18th century literature. Collier particularly admired Jonathan Swift, and an 18th-century satirist's view of life became his own. From his first work to his version of Paradise Lost, Collier saw humans, flawed but with potential, everywhere contaminated by narrow creeds, institutions, coteries, vanities, and careers.[1]

When, at the age of 18 or 19, Collier was asked by his father what he had chosen as a vocation, his reply was, "I want to be a poet." His father indulged him; over the course of the next ten years Collier lived on an allowance of two pounds a week plus whatever he could pick up by writing book reviews and acting as a cultural correspondent for a Japanese newspaper.[2] During this time, being not overly burdened by any financial responsibilities, he developed a penchant for games of chance, conversation in cafes and visits to picture galleries.[3] He never attended university.[4]

He was married to early silent film actress Shirley Palmer in 1936; they were divorced. His second marriage in 1945 was to New York actress Beth Kay (Margaret Elizabeth Eke). They divorced a decade later. His third wife was Harriet Hess Collier, who survived him; they had one son, John G. S. Collier, born in Nice, France, on May 18, 1958.[1]

Career

Poetry

He began writing poetry at age nineteen, and was first published in 1920.[5]

For ten years Collier attempted to reconcile intensely visual experience opened to him by the Sitwells and the modern painters with the more austere preoccupations of those classical authors who were fashionable in the 1920s.[3] He felt that his poetry was unsuccessful, however; he was not able to make his two selves (whom he oddly described as the "archaic, uncouth, and even barbarous" Olsen and the "hysterically self-conscious dandy" Valentine) speak with one voice.[4]

Being an admirer of James Joyce, Collier found a solution in Joyce's Ulysses. "On going for my next lesson to Ulysses, that city of modern prose," he wrote, "I was struck by the great number of magnificent passages in which words are used as they are used in poetry, and in which the emotion which is originally aesthetic, and the emotion which has its origin in intellect, are fused in higher proportions of extreme forms than I had believed was possible."[4] The few poems he wrote during this time were afterwards published in a volume under the title Gemini.[3]

Fiction

While he had written some short stories during the period in which he was trying to find success as a poet, his career did not take shape until the publication of His Monkey Wife in 1930. It enjoyed a certain small popularity and critical approval that helped to sell his short stories.[2] Biographer Richardson explained the literary context for the book:

His Monkey Wife is the last among light early-twentieth-century fantasies that include G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson (1911), and Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928). Collier's book, however, appeared immediately after the economic crash and the start of the Great Depression in 1929, when the tone of the literary and intellectual world darkened. While his novel was well received, it did not achieve the fame of the earlier fantasies. ... Much in this novel echoes, without Swift's bitterness, the contrast between Gulliver and the rational Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels (1726). Collier's style, however, is playful; he borrows heavily from Joseph Conrad, parodies the style of Thomas De Quincey ... and otherwise sustains the light and artificial tone by literary borrowings throughout.[1]

As a private joke, Collier wrote a decidedly cool four-page review of His Monkey Wife, describing it as an attempt "to combine the qualities of the thriller with those of what might be called the decorative novel," and concluding with the following appraisal of the talents of its author: "From the classical standpoint his consciousness is too crammed for harmony, too neurasthenic for proportion, and his humor is too hysterical, too greedy, and too crude."[6] Author Peter Straub has done the same with fake, negative reviews, in admiration of Collier.

His second novel, Tom's A-Cold: A Tale (1933) was grim, depicting a barbaric and dystopian future England; it is mentioned in Joshua Glenn's essay "The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)."[7] Richardson calls it "part of a tradition of apocalyptic literature that began in the 1870s" including The War of the Worlds: "Usually, this literature shows an England destroyed by alien forces, but in Collier's novel, set in Hampshire in 1995, England has been destroyed by its own vices—greed, laziness, and an overwhelming bureaucracy crippled by its own committees and red tape."[1] John Clute wrote,

Radically dissimilar to his most familiar work is Tom's A-Cold ... a remarkably effective post-HOLOCAUST novel set in the 1990s, long after an unexplained disaster has decimated England's (and presumably the world's) population and thrust mankind back into rural barbarism, a condition out of which the eldest survivors, who remember civilization, are trying to educate the young third generation. The simple plot plays no tricks on the reader... Throughout the novel, very movingly, [Collier] renders the reborn, circumambient natural world with a hallucinatory visual intensity found nowhere else in his work. Along with Alun Llewelyn's The Strange Invaders (1934), Tom's A-Cold can be seen, in its atmosphere of almost loving conviction, as a genuine successor to Richard Jefferies's After London (1885); and it contrasts markedly with [Collier's] earlier No Traveller Returns (1931) ... a harsh dystopian novella set in a deadened world."[8]

The title refers to a line spoken by Edgar in King Lear; the outcast Edgar (the son of a fictional Gloucester) pretends to be a madman named Tom o' Bedlam and says to the deranged King, who is wandering on the windy heath, "Tom's a-cold."[9]

His last novel, Defy the Foul Fiend; or, The Misadventures of a Heart, another title taken from the same speech in King Lear as Tom's A-Cold, was published in 1934.

He received the Edgar Award in 1952 for the short story collection Fancies and Goodnights, which also won the International Fantasy Award in 1952.

Writing style

David Langford described Collier as "best known for his highly polished, often bitterly flippant magazine stories... [His] best stories are touched with poetry and real wit, sometimes reminiscent of Saki's. There are moments of outrageous Grand Guignol; the occasional sexual naughtiness is far beyond Thorne Smith in sophistication." Langford praises Collier's "smiling misanthropy."[10] Similarly, Christopher Fowler wrote in The Independent, "His simple, sharp style brought his tales colourfully to life" and described Collier's fiction as "sardonic."[11] John Clute wrote, "He was known mainly for his sophisticated though sometimes rather precious short stories, generally featuring acerbic snap endings; many of these stories have strong elements of fantasy..."[8] E. F. Bleiler also admired Collier's writing, describing Collier as ""One of the modern masters of the short story and certainly the preeminent writer of short fantasies." and stating that The Devil and All was "one of the great fantasy collections".[12]

Other media

In the succeeding years, Collier traveled between England, France and Hollywood.[2] He continued to write short stories, but as time went on, he would turn his attention more and more towards writing screenplays.

Max Wilk, who interviewed Collier for his book Schmucks with Underwoods, tells how, during the 1930s, Collier left the home he owned in England, Wilcote Manor, and traveled to France, where he lived briefly at Antibes and Cassis. The story of how Collier wound up going to Hollywood has been mistold sometimes, but Collier told Wilk that in Cassis,

"I saw a fishing boat I rather liked, and I wanted to buy it. They wanted 7000 francs. And I wondered where on earth I could find that much money. And would you believe, right then, some little girl came riding up on a bicycle to hand me a telegram....[sic] It was my London agent wanting to know, would I go to Hollywood to work for eight weeks, at $500 per week?... And I went out to California, and they were waiting for me. Delightful experience. A picture called Sylvia Scarlett, at RKO. George Cukor was the director. I'd scarcely seen a motion picture in my life; I didn't know a thing about screenwriting. In point of fact, it was something of a mistake. Hugh Walpole had told George I'd be right for the job. George thought Hugh was talking about Evelyn Waugh."[13]

The film Sylvia Scarlett starred Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Brian Aherne, and Edmund Gwenn; it was the comic story of a widower, his daughter Sylvia who disguises herself as a boy, and a con man; Collier's collaborators on the script were Gladys Unger and Mortimer Offner.[14] Wilk writes that the film was considered bizarre at the time, but decades later, it enjoys a cult following.[15]

Collier landed in Hollywood on May 16, 1935, but, he told Wilk, after Sylvia Scarlett he returned to England. There, he spent a year working on Elephant Boy for director Zoltan Korda.

"Korda took me into a projection room, and we sat there watching hours of film that had been shot in Burma...[sic] without the advantage of any script! Just a director with his crew, shooting film of elephants. So we saw elephants coming this way, elephants going that way, charging, retreating...[sic] Endless elephants! And there were some shots of a little boy, about three feet tall, a charming little creature. That would be Sabu.... Korda and I saw all this huge amount of film, and after about three hours of it, he began to utter hideous cries! What could he possibly do with all this goddamned film?"[16]

Collier suggested a way to make the footage cohere into a story and to make "a star out of that little boy, Sabu." After these two unorthodox starts to screenwriting, Collier was on his way to a new writing career.

Screenplays

Collier returned to Hollywood, where he wrote prolifically for film and television. He contributed notably to the screenplays of The African Queen along with James Agee and John Huston, The War Lord, I Am A Camera (adapted from The Berlin Stories and remade later as Cabaret), Her Cardboard Lover, Deception and Roseanna McCoy.

Teleplays

Adaptations of his stories

His short story "Evening Primrose" was the basis of a 1966 television musical by Stephen Sondheim, and it was also adapted for the radio series Escape and by BBC Radio. Several of his stories, including "Back for Christmas," "Wet Saturday" and "De Mortuis" were adapted for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The short story "Green Thoughts" may have inspired Little Shop of Horrors.[11]

Awards

  • Poetry award granted by the Paris literary magazine This Quarter for his poetry collection Gemini.
  • International Fantasy Award for Fiction (1952) for Fancies and Goodnights (1951).
  • Edgar Award for Best Short Story (1952) for Fancies and Goodnights (1951).

Death

John Collier died of a stroke on April 6, 1980, in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California. Near the end of his life, he wrote, "I sometimes marvel that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer."[6]

Collections of Collier's papers

Bibliography

Novels

  • His Monkey Wife: or Married to a Chimp (1930) (currently in print, ISBN 0-9664913-3-5)
  • No Traveller Returns (a chapbook, 1931)
  • Tom's A-Cold: A Tale (1933) (published in the U.S. as Full Circle)
  • Defy the Foul Fiend: or, The Misadventures of a Heart (1934)

Short story collections

  • Green Thoughts (1932)
  • The Devil and All (1934)
  • Variations on a Theme (1934)
  • Presenting Moonshine (1941)
  • The Touch of Nutmeg, and More Unlikely Stories (1943)
  • Fancies and Goodnights (1951) (New York Review Books paperback reprint [2003] currently in print, ISBN 1-59017-051-2) (Note: The first edition contains fifty stories, as do some paperback editions, including the Bantam paperback and the New York Review Books paperback edition. The one now in print is the latest version, including all later additions. Note that Pictures in the Fire and The John Collier Reader contain a few stories not in any edition of Fancies and Goodnights. Also, a story appears in both The Devil and All and The Touch of Nutmeg, but is in no later collection.)
  • Pictures in the Fire (1958)
  • The John Collier Reader (1972) (includes His Monkey Wife in its entirety, chapters 8 and 9 of Defy the Foul Fiend, and selected stories)
  • The Best of John Collier (1975) (paperback containing all the short items from The John Collier Reader, but without His Monkey Wife, which was issued as a separate volume)

Other works

  • Gemini (1931) Poetry collection
  • Paradise Lost: Screenplay for Cinema of the Mind (1973) An adaptation from John Milton that was never produced as a film. Collier changed the format slightly to make it more readable in book form.

Selected short stories

  • Another American Tragedy — A man mutilates himself in order to murder an aged rich relative and impersonate him, to change the will in his own favor - only to discover he isn't the only one who wants the old man dead.
  • Back for Christmas — A man plots a foolproof way to murder his wife, but the murder is exposed because of an unexpected gift she left for him to find. Originally published in The New Yorker (October 7, 1939).[20][21] (Grams erroneously cites a later publication: 13 December 1939 issue of The Tattler (sic - The Tatler was the magazine concerned).[22]) This story has been dramatised many times: once for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, three times for the Suspense radio series[23] (Peter Lorre portrayed the main character in the first broadcast in 1943; the 1948 and 1956 broadcasts both starred Herbert Marshall), as well as once for an episode of Tales of the Unexpected.
  • Bottle Party — A jinn (genie) tricks a man into taking his place in the bottle.
  • Cancel All I Said — A couple's young daughter takes a screen test. The couple's lives are torn apart by the studio head's spoken offer to make the child a star.
  • The Chaser — A young man buying a genuine love potion cannot understand why the seller sells love potions for a dollar, but also offers a colorless, tasteless, undetectable poison at a much, much higher price.
  • Evening Primrose — Probably his most famous; about people who live in a department store, hiding during the day and coming out at night. Betty Richardson wrote that the store is "the Valhalla, of course, of a consumer society ... populated by acquisitive people who pose as mannequins by daylight; by night, they emerge to grab what they want": "Happy to sacrifice all human emotions—love, pity, integrity—for the sake of consumer goods, these denizens have their own pecking order and police. The primary duty of the latter is to suppress any rebellion against this materialistic society."[1] The story was read by Vincent Price and recorded on an LP record by Caedmon Audio in 1980. The story also served as the inspiration for the 1984 music video "Prime Time" by the British progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project.
  • Interpretation of a Dream — A man experiences disturbing and serial dreams of falling from the thirty-ninth story of the skyscraper in which he works, passing one story every night. In his dreams, he looks through the window and makes detailed and veridical observations of the real-life inhabitants as he passes.
  • Over Insurance — A loving couple puts nine-tenths of their money into life insurance and becomes so impoverished as a result that each spouse decides to poison the other, unaware that the other has made the same decision.
  • Special Delivery — A man falls in love with a department-store mannequin. This was later adapted for an episode of the 1960s TV series Journey to the Unknown, retitled "Eve", which starred Dennis Waterman and Carol Lynley.
  • The Steel Cat — An inventor uses his pet mouse to demonstrate his better mousetrap to an insensitive prospect who insists on seeing the mouse actually die.
  • Three Bears Cottage — A man tries unsuccessfully to poison his wife with a mushroom as retaliation for serving him a smaller egg than the one she served herself.
  • Thus I Refute Beelzy — An odiously rational father is confounded by the imagination of his small son.
  • The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It — A man tried for murder and acquitted for lack of motive tells his story to sympathetic friends.
  • Wet Saturday — Stuck indoors on a rainy Saturday, a family must deal with a problem. The problem turns out to be murder, and how to frame an innocent visitor for the crime. Dramatised in the Suspense radio series broadcast on June 24, 1942, and as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents broadcast on September 30, 1956. The episode was actually directed by Hitchcock himself. It was also later adapted for Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.
  • Youth from Vienna — A couple, whose careers (tennis player and actress) depend on youth, are forced to deal with a gift of a single dose of rejuvenating medicine that cannot be divided or shared. This story was the basis for The Fountain of Youth, a 1956 TV pilot for a proposed anthology series, produced by Desilu and written, directed, and hosted by Orson Welles.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Richardson, Betty (2002). "John Collier". In Darren Harris-Fain (ed.). British Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers, 1918-1960. Dictionary of Literary Biography ; vol. 255. Detroit: Gale Group. pp. 30–36.
  2. ^ a b c d The Editors of Time Life: "Editors' Preface", Fancies and Goodnights, pages viv-xii. Time Life Books, 1965.
  3. ^ a b c Editor: jacket blurb, Defy the Foul Fiend, back cover. Penguin Books UK, 1948.
  4. ^ a b c Hoyle, Fred: "Time Reading Program Introduction", Fancies and Goodnights, page xv-xix. Time Life Books, 1965
  5. ^ a b Sauter, Dale (1999). "John Collier: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center". Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  6. ^ a b Paul Theroux, Sunrise with Seamonsters. Houghton Mifflin Books (1986): 303.
  7. ^ Glenn, Joshua. "The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)". Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  8. ^ a b Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter (1993). "Collier, John". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St Martin's Griffin. p. 243. ISBN 0-312-13486-X.
  9. ^ Shakespeare, William. "King Lear". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  10. ^ Langford, David (1993). "Collier, John (Henry Noyes)". In John Clute (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St Martin's Griffin. p. 1268. ISBN 0-312-13486-X.
  11. ^ a b Fowler, Christopher (24 May 2009). "Forgotten authors No. 34: John Collier". The Independent. Independent Print Limited. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  12. ^ E. F. Bleiler, The Guide To Supernatural Fiction. Kent, Ohio : Kent State University Press, 1983. ISBN 0873382889 (p. 117)
  13. ^ Wilk, Max (2004). Schmucks with Underwoods: Conversations with Hollywood's Classic Screenwriters. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. pp. 128–129. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  14. ^ "Sylvia Scarlett". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  15. ^ Wilk, Max (2004). Schmucks with Underwoods: Conversations with Hollywood's Classic Screenwriters. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. p. 129. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  16. ^ Wilk, Max (2004). Schmucks with Underwoods: Conversations with Hollywood's Classic Screenwriters. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. p. 130. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  17. ^ "Birds of Prey". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  18. ^ "Nattmagasinet (Evening Primrose) Norsk tv fra 1970". Filmfront. Retrieved 10 September 2012.
  19. ^ TheBophins (31 August 2014). "The Bophins - Married To A Chimp". Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 – via YouTube.
  20. ^ Collier, John (7 October 1939). "Back for Christmas". The New Yorker. New York: Condé Nast. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  21. ^ "Back for Christmas". Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  22. ^ Martin Grams, Jr. and Patrik Wikstrom (2001). The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Publishing, 135. ISBN 0-9703310-1-0
  23. ^ "Back for Christmas (episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents) • Senses of Cinema". www.sensesofcinema.com.

Further reading

  • Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 80.
  • Bloom, Alan (1996). "John Collier, Fantastic Miniaturist". In Darrell Schweitzer (ed.). Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction: Essays on the Antecedents of Fantastic Literature. I.O. Evans studies in the philosophy & criticism of literature ; no. 23. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press. pp. 68–75. ISBN 1-557-42086-6.
  • Bloom, James D. (2009). Hollywood Intellect. Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books/Rowman Littlefield. ISBN 9780739129234.
  • Benstock, Bernard; Staley, Thomas F. (1989). British Mystery Writers, 1920-1939. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research. ISBN 0-810-34555-2.
  • Clute, John; John Grant (1997). The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 210. ISBN 0-312-14594-2.
  • Currey, L. W. (1979). Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors: A Bibliography of First Printings of Their Fiction and Selected Nonfiction. Boston: G. K. Hall. pp. 121–122.
  • Indick, Ben P. (1988). "Sardonic Fantasies: John Collier". In Darrell Schweitzer (ed.). Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont. pp. 121–127.
  • Kessel, John (1985). "John Collier". In E. F. Bleiler (ed.). Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror. New York: Scribners. pp. 577–583. ISBN 0-684-17808-7.
  • McFall, Matthew (1998). John Collier (1901-1980): Life and Works [dissertation]. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Meyers, Walter E. (1983). "Fancies and Goodnights". In Frank N Magill (ed.). Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, Vol 2. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press. pp. 520–523.
  • Milne, Tom (Spring 1976). "The Elusive John Collier". Sight & Sound (45): 104–108.
  • Richardson, Betty (1983). John Collier. Twayne's English authors series : TEAS 367. Boston: Twayne. ISBN 0-805-76853-X.
  • Stableford, Brian (1983). "His Monkey Wife: Or, Married to a Chimp". In Frank N Magill (ed.). Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, Vol 2. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press. pp. 730–731.
  • Theroux, Paul (1985). "His Monkey Wife". Sunrise With Seamonsters: A Paul Theroux Reader. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 303–308. ISBN 0-395-38221-1.

External links

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to John Collier.

March 08, 2023
john, collier, fiction, writer, john, henry, noyes, collier, 1901, april, 1980, british, born, writer, screenwriter, best, known, short, stories, many, which, appeared, yorker, from, 1930s, 1950s, most, were, collected, john, collier, reader, knopf, 1972, earl. John Henry Noyes Collier 3 May 1901 6 April 1980 was a British born writer and screenwriter best known for his short stories many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1950s Most were collected in The John Collier Reader Knopf 1972 earlier collections include a 1951 volume Fancies and Goodnights which won the International Fantasy Award and remains in print Individual stories are frequently anthologized in fantasy collections John Collier s writing has been praised by authors such as Anthony Burgess Ray Bradbury Roald Dahl Neil Gaiman Michael Chabon Wyndham Lewis and Paul Theroux He appears to have given few interviews in his life those include conversations with biographer Betty Richardson Tom Milne and Max Wilk John CollierJohn Collier c 1970sBorn 1901 05 03 3 May 1901London UKDied6 April 1980 1980 04 06 aged 78 Pacific Palisades Los Angeles California U S OccupationShort story writer screenplay writerNationalityBritish Contents 1 Life 2 Career 2 1 Poetry 2 2 Fiction 2 3 Writing style 3 Other media 3 1 Screenplays 3 2 Teleplays 3 3 Adaptations of his stories 4 Awards 5 Death 6 Collections of Collier s papers 7 Bibliography 7 1 Novels 7 2 Short story collections 7 3 Other works 8 Selected short stories 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External linksLife EditBorn in London in 1901 John Collier was the son of John George and Emily Mary Noyes Collier He had one sister Kathleen Mars Collier His father John George Collier was one of seventeen children and could not afford formal education he worked as a clerk Nor could John George afford schooling for his son beyond prep school John Collier and Kathleen were educated at home 1 He was privately educated by his uncle Vincent Collier a novelist 2 Biographer Betty Richardson wrote He began reading Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales at three these began a lifelong interest in myth and legend that was further stimulated when in his teens he discovered James Frazer s The Golden Bough 1890 1915 An uncle Vincent Collier himself a minor novelist introduced the boy to 17th and 18th century literature Collier particularly admired Jonathan Swift and an 18th century satirist s view of life became his own From his first work to his version of Paradise Lost Collier saw humans flawed but with potential everywhere contaminated by narrow creeds institutions coteries vanities and careers 1 When at the age of 18 or 19 Collier was asked by his father what he had chosen as a vocation his reply was I want to be a poet His father indulged him over the course of the next ten years Collier lived on an allowance of two pounds a week plus whatever he could pick up by writing book reviews and acting as a cultural correspondent for a Japanese newspaper 2 During this time being not overly burdened by any financial responsibilities he developed a penchant for games of chance conversation in cafes and visits to picture galleries 3 He never attended university 4 He was married to early silent film actress Shirley Palmer in 1936 they were divorced His second marriage in 1945 was to New York actress Beth Kay Margaret Elizabeth Eke They divorced a decade later His third wife was Harriet Hess Collier who survived him they had one son John G S Collier born in Nice France on May 18 1958 1 Career EditPoetry Edit He began writing poetry at age nineteen and was first published in 1920 5 For ten years Collier attempted to reconcile intensely visual experience opened to him by the Sitwells and the modern painters with the more austere preoccupations of those classical authors who were fashionable in the 1920s 3 He felt that his poetry was unsuccessful however he was not able to make his two selves whom he oddly described as the archaic uncouth and even barbarous Olsen and the hysterically self conscious dandy Valentine speak with one voice 4 Being an admirer of James Joyce Collier found a solution in Joyce s Ulysses On going for my next lesson to Ulysses that city of modern prose he wrote I was struck by the great number of magnificent passages in which words are used as they are used in poetry and in which the emotion which is originally aesthetic and the emotion which has its origin in intellect are fused in higher proportions of extreme forms than I had believed was possible 4 The few poems he wrote during this time were afterwards published in a volume under the title Gemini 3 Fiction Edit While he had written some short stories during the period in which he was trying to find success as a poet his career did not take shape until the publication of His Monkey Wife in 1930 It enjoyed a certain small popularity and critical approval that helped to sell his short stories 2 Biographer Richardson explained the literary context for the book His Monkey Wife is the last among light early twentieth century fantasies that include G K Chesterton s The Man Who Was Thursday 1908 Max Beerbohm s Zuleika Dobson 1911 and Virginia Woolf s Orlando 1928 Collier s book however appeared immediately after the economic crash and the start of the Great Depression in 1929 when the tone of the literary and intellectual world darkened While his novel was well received it did not achieve the fame of the earlier fantasies Much in this novel echoes without Swift s bitterness the contrast between Gulliver and the rational Houyhnhnms in Gulliver s Travels 1726 Collier s style however is playful he borrows heavily from Joseph Conrad parodies the style of Thomas De Quincey and otherwise sustains the light and artificial tone by literary borrowings throughout 1 As a private joke Collier wrote a decidedly cool four page review of His Monkey Wife describing it as an attempt to combine the qualities of the thriller with those of what might be called the decorative novel and concluding with the following appraisal of the talents of its author From the classical standpoint his consciousness is too crammed for harmony too neurasthenic for proportion and his humor is too hysterical too greedy and too crude 6 Author Peter Straub has done the same with fake negative reviews in admiration of Collier His second novel Tom s A Cold A Tale 1933 was grim depicting a barbaric and dystopian future England it is mentioned in Joshua Glenn s essay The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre Golden Age SF 1904 33 7 Richardson calls it part of a tradition of apocalyptic literature that began in the 1870s including The War of the Worlds Usually this literature shows an England destroyed by alien forces but in Collier s novel set in Hampshire in 1995 England has been destroyed by its own vices greed laziness and an overwhelming bureaucracy crippled by its own committees and red tape 1 John Clute wrote Radically dissimilar to his most familiar work is Tom s A Cold a remarkably effective post HOLOCAUST novel set in the 1990s long after an unexplained disaster has decimated England s and presumably the world s population and thrust mankind back into rural barbarism a condition out of which the eldest survivors who remember civilization are trying to educate the young third generation The simple plot plays no tricks on the reader Throughout the novel very movingly Collier renders the reborn circumambient natural world with a hallucinatory visual intensity found nowhere else in his work Along with Alun Llewelyn s The Strange Invaders 1934 Tom s A Cold can be seen in its atmosphere of almost loving conviction as a genuine successor to Richard Jefferies s After London 1885 and it contrasts markedly with Collier s earlier No Traveller Returns 1931 a harsh dystopian novella set in a deadened world 8 The title refers to a line spoken by Edgar in King Lear the outcast Edgar the son of a fictional Gloucester pretends to be a madman named Tom o Bedlam and says to the deranged King who is wandering on the windy heath Tom s a cold 9 His last novel Defy the Foul Fiend or The Misadventures of a Heart another title taken from the same speech in King Lear as Tom s A Cold was published in 1934 He received the Edgar Award in 1952 for the short story collection Fancies and Goodnights which also won the International Fantasy Award in 1952 Writing style Edit David Langford described Collier as best known for his highly polished often bitterly flippant magazine stories His best stories are touched with poetry and real wit sometimes reminiscent of Saki s There are moments of outrageous Grand Guignol the occasional sexual naughtiness is far beyond Thorne Smith in sophistication Langford praises Collier s smiling misanthropy 10 Similarly Christopher Fowler wrote in The Independent His simple sharp style brought his tales colourfully to life and described Collier s fiction as sardonic 11 John Clute wrote He was known mainly for his sophisticated though sometimes rather precious short stories generally featuring acerbic snap endings many of these stories have strong elements of fantasy 8 E F Bleiler also admired Collier s writing describing Collier as One of the modern masters of the short story and certainly the preeminent writer of short fantasies and stating that The Devil and All was one of the great fantasy collections 12 Other media EditIn the succeeding years Collier traveled between England France and Hollywood 2 He continued to write short stories but as time went on he would turn his attention more and more towards writing screenplays Max Wilk who interviewed Collier for his book Schmucks with Underwoods tells how during the 1930s Collier left the home he owned in England Wilcote Manor and traveled to France where he lived briefly at Antibes and Cassis The story of how Collier wound up going to Hollywood has been mistold sometimes but Collier told Wilk that in Cassis I saw a fishing boat I rather liked and I wanted to buy it They wanted 7000 francs And I wondered where on earth I could find that much money And would you believe right then some little girl came riding up on a bicycle to hand me a telegram sic It was my London agent wanting to know would I go to Hollywood to work for eight weeks at 500 per week And I went out to California and they were waiting for me Delightful experience A picture called Sylvia Scarlett at RKO George Cukor was the director I d scarcely seen a motion picture in my life I didn t know a thing about screenwriting In point of fact it was something of a mistake Hugh Walpole had told George I d be right for the job George thought Hugh was talking about Evelyn Waugh 13 The film Sylvia Scarlett starred Katharine Hepburn Cary Grant Brian Aherne and Edmund Gwenn it was the comic story of a widower his daughter Sylvia who disguises herself as a boy and a con man Collier s collaborators on the script were Gladys Unger and Mortimer Offner 14 Wilk writes that the film was considered bizarre at the time but decades later it enjoys a cult following 15 Collier landed in Hollywood on May 16 1935 but he told Wilk after Sylvia Scarlett he returned to England There he spent a year working on Elephant Boy for director Zoltan Korda Korda took me into a projection room and we sat there watching hours of film that had been shot in Burma sic without the advantage of any script Just a director with his crew shooting film of elephants So we saw elephants coming this way elephants going that way charging retreating sic Endless elephants And there were some shots of a little boy about three feet tall a charming little creature That would be Sabu Korda and I saw all this huge amount of film and after about three hours of it he began to utter hideous cries What could he possibly do with all this goddamned film 16 Collier suggested a way to make the footage cohere into a story and to make a star out of that little boy Sabu After these two unorthodox starts to screenwriting Collier was on his way to a new writing career Screenplays Edit Collier returned to Hollywood where he wrote prolifically for film and television He contributed notably to the screenplays of The African Queen along with James Agee and John Huston The War Lord I Am A Camera adapted from The Berlin Stories and remade later as Cabaret Her Cardboard Lover Deception and Roseanna McCoy Sylvia Scarlett 1935 Elephant Boy 1937 Her Cardboard Lover 1942 Deception 1946 Roseanna McCoy 1949 The African Queen 1951 uncredited The Story of Three Loves 1953 Collier wrote two of three segments The Jealous Lover and Equilibrium I Am A Camera 1955 The War Lord 1965 Teleplays Edit The Man in the Royal Suite Adapted by Collier from a novel by Edgar Wallace for The Four Just Men April 27 1960 Season 1 Episode 27 I Spy Adapted by Collier from the play by John Mortimer of Rumpole of the Bailey fame for Alfred Hitchcock Presents December 5 1961 Season 7 Episode 9 starring Kay Walsh and Eric Barker Maria Written for Alfred Hitchcock Presents October 24 1961 Season 7 Episode 3 starring Norman Lloyd and Nita Talbot The Magic Shop Adapted by Collier and James Parish from the 1903 story by H G Wells of the same title written for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour January 10 1964 Season 2 Episode 13 starring Leslie Nielsen and Peggy McCay Adaptations of his stories Edit His short story Evening Primrose was the basis of a 1966 television musical by Stephen Sondheim and it was also adapted for the radio series Escape and by BBC Radio Several of his stories including Back for Christmas Wet Saturday and De Mortuis were adapted for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents The short story Green Thoughts may have inspired Little Shop of Horrors 11 De Mortuis Adapted by Fred Coe for Lights Out September 1 1946 Season 1 Episode 3 starring John Loder Mary Mary Quite Contrary Adapted by James Lee for Lights Out March 27 1950 Season 2 Episode 29 starring George Englund and Gaye Jordan Duet for Two Actors Adapted for The Billy Rose Show February 20 1951 Season 1 Episode 21 starring Frank Albertson and Cyril Ritchard De Mortuis Adapted for Suspense June 12 1951 Season 3 Episode 42 starring Olive Deering and Walter Slezak Bird of Prey Adapted by Nelson S Bond as Birds of Prey 17 for Gruen Guild Theater June 19 1952 Season 2 Episode 7 starring Bill Baldwin William Challee and Billy Curtis De Mortuis Adapted for Star Tonight as Concerning Death February 17 1955 Season 1 Episode 3 starring Edward Andrews and Jo Van Fleet Back for Christmas Adapted by Francis M Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents March 4 1956 Season 1 Episode 23 starring John Williams and Isobel Elsom Wet Saturday Adapted by Marian B Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents September 30 1956 Season 2 Episode 1 starring Cedric Hardwicke and John Williams De Mortuis Adapted by Francis M Cockrell for Alfred Hitchcock Presents October 14 1956 Season 2 Episode 3 starring Robert Emhardt Cara Williams and Henry Jones None Are So Blind Adapted by James P Cavanagh for Alfred Hitchcock Presents October 28 1956 Season 2 Episode 5 starring Hurd Hatfield and Mildred Dunnock Youth from Vienna Adapted directed and hosted by Orson Welles as The Fountain of Youth a 1956 TV pilot for a proposed anthology series Anniversary Gift Adapted by Harold Swanton for Alfred Hitchcock Presents November 1 1959 Season 5 Episode 6 starring Harry Morgan and Barbara Baxley The Chaser Adapted by Robert Presnell Jr for Twilight Zone May 13 1960 Season 1 Episode 31 starring John McIntire Patricia Barry and George Grizzard The Small Elephants Adapted by Russell Beggs for G E True Theater March 12 1961 Season 9 Episode 21 starring Ronald Reagan as Host Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space fame Barbara Nichols Cliff Robertson and George Sanders Evening Primrose Adapted by James Goldman as a 1966 television movie directed by Paul Bogart starring Anthony Perkins Dorothy Stickney and Larry Gates with songs by Stephen Sondheim Special Delivery Adapted by Michael Ashe and Paul Wheeler as Eve for Journey to the Unknown September 26 1968 Season 1 Episode 10 starring Carol Lynley Dennis Waterman and Michael Gough Evening Primrose Adapted by Jon Bing and Tor Age Bringsvaerd as Nattmagasinet a 1970 Norwegian television film 18 Sleeping Beauty Adapted by James B Harris as Some Call It Loving a 1973 feature film starring Zalman King Carol White Tisa Farrow and Richard Pryor Back for Christmas Adapted by Denis Cannan for Tales of the Unexpected May 31 1980 Season 2 Episode 14 starring Roald Dahl Introducer Richard Johnson Sian Phillips and Avril Elgar De Mortuis Adapted by Robin Chapman as Never Speak Ill of the Dead for Tales of the Unexpected May 24 1981 Season 4 Episode 8 starring Colin Blakely Warren Clarke and Keith Drinkel Youth from Vienna Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected July 2 1983 Season 6 Episode 13 Wet Saturday Adapted by Collier for Tales of the Unexpected July 7 1984 Season 7 Episode 8 Bird of Prey Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected August 4 1984 Season 7 Episode 10 In the Cards Adapted by Ross Thomas for Tales of the Unexpected July 14 1985 Season 8 Episode 2 starring Susan Strasberg Max Gail famous for his role as Detective Stan Wojo Wojciehowicz on the television sitcom Barney Miller Elaine Giftos and Kenneth Tigar Anniversary Gift Adapted by Rob Hedden for Alfred Hitchcock Presents February 28 1987 Season 2 Episode 6 starring Pamela Sue Martin and Peter Dvorsky In The Cards as Dead Right Adapted by Andy Wolk for Tales from the Crypt April 21 1990 Season 2 Episode 1 starring Demi Moore and Jeffrey Tambor His Monkey Wife or Married to a Chimp Glam punk band The Bophins 19 song Married to a Chimp is based on the book Awards EditPoetry award granted by the Paris literary magazine This Quarter for his poetry collection Gemini International Fantasy Award for Fiction 1952 for Fancies and Goodnights 1951 Edgar Award for Best Short Story 1952 for Fancies and Goodnights 1951 Death EditJohn Collier died of a stroke on April 6 1980 in Pacific Palisades Los Angeles California Near the end of his life he wrote I sometimes marvel that a third rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second rate writer 6 Collections of Collier s papers EditThe Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin s papers represent his transition from a poet to writer of novels short stories and screenplays The bulk of the papers are manuscripts covering several genres although a substantial amount of correspondence is also included 5 University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Colliers son John G S CollierBibliography EditNovels Edit His Monkey Wife or Married to a Chimp 1930 currently in print ISBN 0 9664913 3 5 No Traveller Returns a chapbook 1931 Tom s A Cold A Tale 1933 published in the U S as Full Circle Defy the Foul Fiend or The Misadventures of a Heart 1934 Short story collections Edit Green Thoughts 1932 The Devil and All 1934 Variations on a Theme 1934 Presenting Moonshine 1941 The Touch of Nutmeg and More Unlikely Stories 1943 Fancies and Goodnights 1951 New York Review Books paperback reprint 2003 currently in print ISBN 1 59017 051 2 Note The first edition contains fifty stories as do some paperback editions including the Bantam paperback and the New York Review Books paperback edition The one now in print is the latest version including all later additions Note that Pictures in the Fire and The John Collier Reader contain a few stories not in any edition of Fancies and Goodnights Also a story appears in both The Devil and All and The Touch of Nutmeg but is in no later collection Pictures in the Fire 1958 The John Collier Reader 1972 includes His Monkey Wife in its entirety chapters 8 and 9 of Defy the Foul Fiend and selected stories The Best of John Collier 1975 paperback containing all the short items from The John Collier Reader but without His Monkey Wife which was issued as a separate volume Other works Edit Gemini 1931 Poetry collection Paradise Lost Screenplay for Cinema of the Mind 1973 An adaptation from John Milton that was never produced as a film Collier changed the format slightly to make it more readable in book form Selected short stories EditAnother American Tragedy A man mutilates himself in order to murder an aged rich relative and impersonate him to change the will in his own favor only to discover he isn t the only one who wants the old man dead Back for Christmas A man plots a foolproof way to murder his wife but the murder is exposed because of an unexpected gift she left for him to find Originally published in The New Yorker October 7 1939 20 21 Grams erroneously cites a later publication 13 December 1939 issue of The Tattler sic The Tatler was the magazine concerned 22 This story has been dramatised many times once for Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times for the Suspense radio series 23 Peter Lorre portrayed the main character in the first broadcast in 1943 the 1948 and 1956 broadcasts both starred Herbert Marshall as well as once for an episode of Tales of the Unexpected Bottle Party A jinn genie tricks a man into taking his place in the bottle Cancel All I Said A couple s young daughter takes a screen test The couple s lives are torn apart by the studio head s spoken offer to make the child a star The Chaser A young man buying a genuine love potion cannot understand why the seller sells love potions for a dollar but also offers a colorless tasteless undetectable poison at a much much higher price Evening Primrose Probably his most famous about people who live in a department store hiding during the day and coming out at night Betty Richardson wrote that the store is the Valhalla of course of a consumer society populated by acquisitive people who pose as mannequins by daylight by night they emerge to grab what they want Happy to sacrifice all human emotions love pity integrity for the sake of consumer goods these denizens have their own pecking order and police The primary duty of the latter is to suppress any rebellion against this materialistic society 1 The story was read by Vincent Price and recorded on an LP record by Caedmon Audio in 1980 The story also served as the inspiration for the 1984 music video Prime Time by the British progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project Interpretation of a Dream A man experiences disturbing and serial dreams of falling from the thirty ninth story of the skyscraper in which he works passing one story every night In his dreams he looks through the window and makes detailed and veridical observations of the real life inhabitants as he passes Over Insurance A loving couple puts nine tenths of their money into life insurance and becomes so impoverished as a result that each spouse decides to poison the other unaware that the other has made the same decision Special Delivery A man falls in love with a department store mannequin This was later adapted for an episode of the 1960s TV series Journey to the Unknown retitled Eve which starred Dennis Waterman and Carol Lynley The Steel Cat An inventor uses his pet mouse to demonstrate his better mousetrap to an insensitive prospect who insists on seeing the mouse actually die Three Bears Cottage A man tries unsuccessfully to poison his wife with a mushroom as retaliation for serving him a smaller egg than the one she served herself Thus I Refute Beelzy An odiously rational father is confounded by the imagination of his small son The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It A man tried for murder and acquitted for lack of motive tells his story to sympathetic friends Wet Saturday Stuck indoors on a rainy Saturday a family must deal with a problem The problem turns out to be murder and how to frame an innocent visitor for the crime Dramatised in the Suspense radio series broadcast on June 24 1942 and as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents broadcast on September 30 1956 The episode was actually directed by Hitchcock himself It was also later adapted for Roald Dahl s Tales of the Unexpected Youth from Vienna A couple whose careers tennis player and actress depend on youth are forced to deal with a gift of a single dose of rejuvenating medicine that cannot be divided or shared This story was the basis for The Fountain of Youth a 1956 TV pilot for a proposed anthology series produced by Desilu and written directed and hosted by Orson Welles References Edit a b c d e f Richardson Betty 2002 John Collier In Darren Harris Fain ed British Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers 1918 1960 Dictionary of Literary Biography vol 255 Detroit Gale Group pp 30 36 a b c d The Editors of Time Life Editors Preface Fancies and Goodnights pages viv xii Time Life Books 1965 a b c Editor jacket blurb Defy the Foul Fiend back cover Penguin Books UK 1948 a b c Hoyle Fred Time Reading Program Introduction Fancies and Goodnights page xv xix Time Life Books 1965 a b Sauter Dale 1999 John Collier An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas at Austin Retrieved 7 September 2012 a b Paul Theroux Sunrise with Seamonsters Houghton Mifflin Books 1986 303 Glenn Joshua The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre Golden Age SF 1904 33 Retrieved 7 September 2012 a b Clute John Nicholls Peter 1993 Collier John The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction New York St Martin s Griffin p 243 ISBN 0 312 13486 X Shakespeare William King Lear Massachusetts Institute of Technology Retrieved 7 September 2012 Langford David 1993 Collier John Henry Noyes In John Clute ed The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction New York St Martin s Griffin p 1268 ISBN 0 312 13486 X a b Fowler Christopher 24 May 2009 Forgotten authors No 34 John Collier The Independent Independent Print Limited Retrieved 7 September 2012 E F Bleiler The Guide To Supernatural Fiction Kent Ohio Kent State University Press 1983 ISBN 0873382889 p 117 Wilk Max 2004 Schmucks with Underwoods Conversations with Hollywood s Classic Screenwriters New York Applause Theatre amp Cinema Books pp 128 129 Retrieved 7 September 2012 Sylvia Scarlett Internet Movie Database Retrieved 7 September 2012 Wilk Max 2004 Schmucks with Underwoods Conversations with Hollywood s Classic Screenwriters New York Applause Theatre amp Cinema Books p 129 Retrieved 7 September 2012 Wilk Max 2004 Schmucks with Underwoods Conversations with Hollywood s Classic Screenwriters New York Applause Theatre amp Cinema Books p 130 Retrieved 7 September 2012 Birds of Prey Internet Movie Database Retrieved 7 September 2012 Nattmagasinet Evening Primrose Norsk tv fra 1970 Filmfront Retrieved 10 September 2012 TheBophins 31 August 2014 The Bophins Married To A Chimp Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 via YouTube Collier John 7 October 1939 Back for Christmas The New Yorker New York Conde Nast ISSN 0028 792X Retrieved 7 September 2012 Back for Christmas Internet Speculative Fiction Database Retrieved 7 September 2012 Martin Grams Jr and Patrik Wikstrom 2001 The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion OTR Publishing 135 ISBN 0 9703310 1 0 Back for Christmas episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents Senses of Cinema www sensesofcinema com Further reading EditBleiler Everett 1948 The Checklist of Fantastic Literature Chicago Shasta Publishers p 80 Bloom Alan 1996 John Collier Fantastic Miniaturist In Darrell Schweitzer ed Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction Essays on the Antecedents of Fantastic Literature I O Evans studies in the philosophy amp criticism of literature no 23 San Bernardino Calif Borgo Press pp 68 75 ISBN 1 557 42086 6 Bloom James D 2009 Hollywood Intellect Lanham MD Lexington Books Rowman Littlefield ISBN 9780739129234 Benstock Bernard Staley Thomas F 1989 British Mystery Writers 1920 1939 Detroit Mich Gale Research ISBN 0 810 34555 2 Clute John John Grant 1997 The Encyclopedia of Fantasy New York St Martin s Press p 210 ISBN 0 312 14594 2 Currey L W 1979 Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors A Bibliography of First Printings of Their Fiction and Selected Nonfiction Boston G K Hall pp 121 122 Indick Ben P 1988 Sardonic Fantasies John Collier In Darrell Schweitzer ed Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II Mercer Island WA Starmont pp 121 127 Kessel John 1985 John Collier In E F Bleiler ed Supernatural Fiction Writers Fantasy and Horror New York Scribners pp 577 583 ISBN 0 684 17808 7 McFall Matthew 1998 John Collier 1901 1980 Life and Works dissertation Oxford Oxford University Press Meyers Walter E 1983 Fancies and Goodnights In Frank N Magill ed Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature Vol 2 Englewood Cliffs NJ Salem Press pp 520 523 Milne Tom Spring 1976 The Elusive John Collier Sight amp Sound 45 104 108 Richardson Betty 1983 John Collier Twayne s English authors series TEAS 367 Boston Twayne ISBN 0 805 76853 X Stableford Brian 1983 His Monkey Wife Or Married to a Chimp In Frank N Magill ed Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature Vol 2 Englewood Cliffs NJ Salem Press pp 730 731 Theroux Paul 1985 His Monkey Wife Sunrise With Seamonsters A Paul Theroux Reader Boston Houghton Mifflin pp 303 308 ISBN 0 395 38221 1 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to John Collier John Collier Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin A Guide to Supernatural Fiction John Collier John Collier at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database John Collier at IMDb John Collier at Library of Congress Authorities with 30 catalogue records Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title John Collier fiction writer amp oldid 1141166178, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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