Background
William Jacobs was born on September 8, 1863 in Wapping, London; his father was a wharf manager on the South Devon wharf at Lower East Smithfield. As a child he enjoyed traveling to visit his relatives in East Anglia.
Malet St, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX, UK
William Jacobs was educated later at Birkbeck College (then called Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, now part of the University of London).
Malet St, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX, UK
William Jacobs was educated later at Birkbeck College (then called Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, now part of the University of London).
(When the White family comes into the possession of a monk...)
When the White family comes into the possession of a monkey’s paw that magically grant wishes, they do what many people would do — they wish for money. But every wish has a consequence, and the White family finds they are completely unprepared for what comes next. The Monkey’s Paw has become a classic horror story and has been adapted numerous times, including into episodes of such popular television series as The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Tales from the Crypt.
https://www.amazon.com/Monkeys-Paw-W-W-Jacobs/dp/1976062659/?tag=2022091-20
1902
(This volume contains the ghostly tales of the British wri...)
This volume contains the ghostly tales of the British writer W. W. Jacobs.
https://www.amazon.com/Twin-Spirits-Complete-Stories-Classics/dp/1614982163/?tag=2022091-20
William Jacobs was born on September 8, 1863 in Wapping, London; his father was a wharf manager on the South Devon wharf at Lower East Smithfield. As a child he enjoyed traveling to visit his relatives in East Anglia.
Jacobs attended “private” schools: prestigious, expensive upper-class boarding schools were in those days called “public” schools, whereas a “private” school was a considerably less impressive affair, run as a business by an entrepreneurial proprietor. Graduates of these schools filled the ranks of bookkeepers, clerks, secretaries, and other minor white-collar occupations in England’s commercial and industrial concerns. At the age of sixteen Jacobs left school to take a position in the civil service. He was educated later at Birkbeck College (then called Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, now part of the University of London).
At the age of sixteen Jacobs left school to take a position in the civil service. He became a clerk at the Post Office Savings Bank and rapidly developed an extreme distaste for the work. It was possibly out of a frustration with his “captivity”, as he called it, that he began to write.
Jacobs’s name has become inextricably bound up with “The Monkey’s Paw”, a short story widely recognized as a horror masterpiece. However, in his own time, he was better known as a humorist, and only dabbled in the tale of terror on occasion. His first sketches and short pieces were droll stories written for his own amusement, but in 1885 he began publishing his work in minor magazines. Gradually, Jacobs began to take his writing more seriously, and delved into his childhood experiences on the docks and on journeys along the English coastline for material.
Jacobs’s success developed just as gradually. As his work continued to trickle into print, he began to see placement in larger and more important venues. Jerome K. Jerome, one of the foremost English humorists and publishers of his time, bought several of his sketches for the Idler and To-Day magazines. In 1896, Jacobs assembled a collection of his work and began canvassing publishers — he succeeded, and his first book, Many Cargoes, was warmly received by both critics and the public alike. In fact, negative reviews were exceptionally rare in Jacobs’s career.
Many Cargoes performed so well, entering a second printing one year after it appeared, that Jacobs was able to publish his work in the foremost fiction magazine of his age: the Strand. Suddenly, Jacobs’s name could be found listed among such luminaries as Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H. G. Wells — and his work was being read regularly by as many as half a million people. Having arrived at the Strand, Jacobs chose to remain, and almost never published a story anywhere else.
Part of Jacobs’s modus operandi involved a developing setting, the town of Claybury, and recurring characters — the Nightwatchman, who often narrates these stories, and other seaside figures such as Ginger Dick, Peter Russet, Bob Pretty, and Sam Small. With great acuity, Jacobs realized the comic potential of seafaring characters blundering through life on land, playing elaborate pranks on each other, hoodwinking persons out of their possessions and money, or involving themselves in amorous intrigues. Nineteen years of “captivity” had come and gone. Jacobs, still somewhat mistrustful of his newfound fame and popularity, did not leave his post at the Bank until after the publication of his third collection, Sea Urchins. In 1898, Jacobs finally felt confident enough to give himself to writing full time.
It was during this period that he wrote a piece that, while atypical of his work at the time, would come to dwarf all his other work in retrospect: “The Monkey’s Paw.” This famous macabre tale substantiates the old proverb that warns us to be careful what we wish for. The eponymous paw grants its owner three wishes, although this magic is prone to backfiring. “The Monkey’s Paw” has been anthologized countless times since its first appearance, and has been adapted to both stage and screen. Its steady, relentlessly building tension has made it one of the most popular horror stories in history. It was not Jacobs’s first. “His Brother’s Keeper”, the early novella titled The Brown Man's Servant, and several other examples attest to Jacobs’s enduring interest in the mysterious and the terrible.
Shortly after the appearance of “The Monkey’s Paw” in 1900, he continued to write copiously for a time, but after 1916 the amount of his new work decreased sharply. Entering a kind of semi-retirement, Jacobs occupied himself with adapting his old stories into short plays. His popularity never diminished, and his work remained constantly in print.
(When the White family comes into the possession of a monk...)
1902(This volume contains the ghostly tales of the British wri...)
Jacobs stated that although he had held left-wing opinions in his youth, in his later years his political position was "Conservative and Individualistic."
Jacobs was known not for any story in particular, at least during his life, as for his own particular brand of humorous writing. First, Jacobs’s absurd humor was, according to Chesterton, “outside criticism”; second, he credited the importance of plot in Jacobs’s stories, as opposed to the more airy and ephemeral observational humor of a Max Beerbohm, for example; thirdly, Chesterton pointed to Jacobs’s lucidity, his clarity and simplicity of storytelling; and finally, and most important of all, Jacobs was, Chesterton claimed, “the artistic expression of the humor of the people.”
William Jacob avoided publicity, keeping to a small circle of friends, including the illustrator of many of his books, E. W. Kemble.
Physical Characteristics: A slightly built man, pale in complexion, and retiring, Jacobs was no literary lion.
Quotes from others about the person
He wrote stories of three kinds: describing the misadventures of sailor-men ashore; celebrating the artful dodger of a slow-witted village; and tales of the macabre." - Michael Sadleir
Jacobs married Agnes Eleanor Williams in 1900 at West Ham, Essex. Agnes had previously been a noted suffragette. The 1901 Census records their living with their first child, a three-month-old daughter, at Kings Place Road, Buckhurst Hill, Essex.
Edward Winsor Kemble (January 18, 1861 – September 19, 1933), usually cited as E. W. Kemble, was an American illustrator. He is known best for illustrating the first edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and for his cartoons of African Americans.
