William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson was born at Blackmore End, Essex, in 1877; at a young age, he ran off to join the Mercantile Navy, and spent eight years at sea-an experience that deeply informed the imaginative productions of his later years. His short but prolific literary career resulted in a number of highly idiosyncratic works that have since had a great impact on the fields of fantasy, horror, and science fiction; his most famous works are few in number, but widely influential: The Boats of the Glen Carrig (1907), The House on the Borderland (1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909), The Night Land (1912), and Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder (1913). He was killed in the First World War at Ypres, Belgium, in April 1918.