William Wymark Jacobs

William Wymark Jacobs was an English writer of short fiction and drama, best known for the macabre story The Monkey's Paw (1902). He wrote humorous tales of sailors and dockside life as well as a smaller number of ghost stories. His fiction appeared in collections such as Many Cargoes (1896), The Lady of the Barge (1902) and Sailors' Knots (1909).

He was born in 1863 at Crombie's Row in Mile End Old Town, London. His father, William Gage Jacobs, managed the South Devon wharf near St. Katherine Docks. As a child, he spent time on the Thames waterfront and became familiar with the speech and character of the area. His mother died when he was young, and his father later remarried and had several more children, including the illustrator Helen Jacobs. He attended a private school in London and then Birkbeck College, where he met the writer William Pett Ridge.

In 1879, he became a clerk in the Post Office Savings Bank. His first story appeared in print in 1885, but recognition took time. By the late 1890s, he had gained enough income from writing to leave the Post Office. His first major success came with Many Cargoes (1896), which collected tales of sailors and dockworkers. The Skipper's Wooing (1897) and Sea Urchins (1898) followed, and his stories began to appear in The Strand from 1898.

The Monkey's Paw, published in The Lady of the Barge (1902), became his most widely known story and has been adapted many times for stage, film, radio and television. He also wrote other ghost tales, such as The Toll House and Jerry Bundler, but most of his work was comic. Collections, including Captains' All, Sailors' Knots, and Night Watches, featured characters from London's dockland, notably the night-watchman and his acquaintances, Ginger Dick, Sam Small, and Peter Russet.

From around the time of the First World War, his output of short fiction slowed, and he began adapting his stories for the stage. His first play, The Ghost of Jerry Bundler, premiered in 1899, and he went on to write eighteen plays, some of which he wrote in collaboration with others.

He married Agnes Eleanor Williams in 1900, and they had five children. The family lived in Essex, first in Buckhurst Hill and later in Loughton, where he set some of his stories. He also maintained a London residence at Gloucester Gate, near Regent's Park. In later life, he described his political views as conservative and individualistic. He took part in literary events, including a mock trial of a Dickens character in 1914. He saw some of his works adapted for film from the late 1920s.

William Wymark Jacobs died on 1 September 1943 in Islington, London, at the age of seventy-nine.