John Collier

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. 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. He was privately educated by his uncle Vincent Collier, a novelist. Biographer Betty Richardson wrote: 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. 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. He never attended university.