CHARLES BIRKIN
Author biography:
Charles Lloyd Birkin was born in England in 1907 and was educated at Eton College from 1921-1926. His contributions to British horror began in 1932 when publisher Philip Allan employed him to edit the Creeps series of short story collections, which included volumes with titles like Creeps, Shudders, Shivers, Nightmares, Tales of Death, and Tales of Fear. The books, with their sensational dust jacket art and stories by writers like H.R. Wakefield, Lord Dunsany, Russell Thorndike, and Birkin himself (under the name Charles Lloyd) are highly collectible today and were the precursors of later popular British horror anthologies, such as the Pan Books of Horror Stories. Birkin’s contributions to the Creepsvolumes were collected in his first book, Devil’s Spawn (1936), the last book published by Birkin before a long hiatus. In 1942, he succeeded his uncle as the 5th Baronet Birkin, and he served in the Second World War in the Sherwood Foresters.
After a long break, Birkin resumed writing following his return to London in 1960, and, perhaps at the instigation of Dennis Wheatley, began publishing new collections of short stories with The Kiss of Death (1964), for which Wheatley provided an introduction. Several more volumes of tales followed between 1965 and 1970, including The Smell of Evil (1965), also introduced by Wheatley. From 1970 to 1974 Birkin lived in Cyprus, which he fled in the wake of the violence that followed the Turkish invasion. He and his wife, Janet, spent their later years in the Isle of Man, where Birkin died in 1985.
Charles Lloyd Birkin was born in England in 1907 and was educated at Eton College from 1921-1926. His contributions to British horror began in 1932 when publisher Philip Allan employed him to edit the Creeps series of short story collections, which included volumes with titles like Creeps, Shudders, Shivers, Nightmares, Tales of Death, and Tales of Fear. The books, with their sensational dust jacket art and stories by writers like H.R. Wakefield, Lord Dunsany, Russell Thorndike, and Birkin himself (under the name Charles Lloyd) are highly collectible today and were the precursors of later popular British horror anthologies, such as the Pan Books of Horror Stories. Birkin’s contributions to the Creepsvolumes were collected in his first book, Devil’s Spawn (1936), the last book published by Birkin before a long hiatus. In 1942, he succeeded his uncle as the 5th Baronet Birkin, and he served in the Second World War in the Sherwood Foresters.
After a long break, Birkin resumed writing following his return to London in 1960, and, perhaps at the instigation of Dennis Wheatley, began publishing new collections of short stories with The Kiss of Death (1964), for which Wheatley provided an introduction. Several more volumes of tales followed between 1965 and 1970, including The Smell of Evil (1965), also introduced by Wheatley. From 1970 to 1974 Birkin lived in Cyprus, which he fled in the wake of the violence that followed the Turkish invasion. He and his wife, Janet, spent their later years in the Isle of Man, where Birkin died in 1985.
TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR
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