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About the Author: Oliver Onions

Oliver Onions was born in Bradford in 1873. Although he legally changed his name to George Oliver in 1918, he always published under the name Oliver Onions. Onions originally worked as a commercial artist before turning to writing, and the dust jackets of his earliest works included illustrations painted by Onions himself.

Onions was a prolific writer of short stories and novels and is best remembered today for his ghost stories, the most famous of which is probably ‘The Beckoning Fair One’, originally published in Widdershins (1911). Despite being known today chiefly for his supernatural short fiction, Onions also published more than a dozen novels in a variety of genres, including In Accordance with the Evidence (1912), The Tower of Oblivion (1921), The Hand of Kornelius Voyt (1939), The Story of Ragged Robyn (1945), and Poor Man's Tapestry (1946), which won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize as the best work of fiction published that year.

Onions was apparently a very private individual, and though admired and well-respected in his time, he appears not to have moved in literary circles, and few personal memoirs of him survive. He spent most of his later life in Wales, where he lived with his wife, Berta Ruck (1878-1978), herself a prolific and popular novelist; they had two sons, Arthur (b. 1912) and William (b. 1913). Oliver Onions died in 1961.


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Goodreads rating: 3.68

Paperback, Published in Apr 2008 by Book Jungle

ISBN10: 1605974277 | ISBN13: 9781605974279

Page count: 228

George Oliver Onions was a 20th century British writer. Onions published over 40 novels and short story collections. Before becoming a writer Onions was a commercial artist. His first edition novels had full color paintings painted by him on their dust jackets. . In 1913 he legally changed his name to George Oliver but continued to use Oliver Onions as his pen name. Onions wrote detective stories, science fiction, ghost stories and historical fiction. Widdershins is his best know work about ghosts. The novella The Beckoning Fair is included. This novella is considered to be one of the best psychological horror fiction stories ever written. A struggling writer moves into rooms in a vacant house in hopes that the isolation will help him concentrate. His art and his sanity are jeopardized. A feminine spirit gradually possesses him. The story can also be viewed as a psychotic breakdown culminating in murder and a catatonic state. Onions often writes about the connection between creativity and insanity. This is a great book not to be read by the faint of heart.

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