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E. Hoffmann Price
Edgar Hoffmann Trooper Price (July 3, 1898 – June 18, 1988) was an American writer of popular fiction (he was a self-titled "fictioneer") for the pulp magazine marketplace. He collaborated with H. P. Lovecraft on "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".
Price was born at Fowler, California. During his early years, he became interested in China as a result of his interactions with a Chinese salesman in his hometown. As a form of punishment, his mother once threatened to leave Price with the salesman. Price did not see this as a punishment. His interest in China also had a sexual aspect. His wife later noted that "Oriental women fascinate [him]".
Price served with the American military in Mexico and the Philippines, before being sent to France with the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. He was a champion fencer and boxer, an amateur Orientalist, and a student of the Arabic language; science-fiction author Jack Williamson, in his 1984 autobiography Wonder's Child, called E. Hoffmann Price a "real live soldier of fortune".
Originally intending to be a career soldier, Price graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1923. Starting in 1924, Price took a job with Union Carbide at a plant outside New Orleans. He purchased a typewriter and in his spare time started to write stories. After numerous rejections, he sold his first piece, “Triangle with Variations,” to the magazine Droll Stories in 1924, followed quickly by the first of scores of acceptances by Weird Tales, "The Rajah's Gift" (January 1925).
In 1932 Price was fired from his Union Carbide job and turned to writing full time. He moved to Manhattan and began to write extensively for pulp magazines. In his literary career, Hoffmann Price produced fiction for a wide range of publications, from Argosy to Terror Tales, from Speed Detective to Spicy Mystery Stories. Yet he was most readily identified as a Weird Tales writer, one of the group who wrote regularly for editor Farnsworth Wright. Price was part of a loose group of friends that included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Price published 24 solo stories in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1950, plus three collaborations with Otis Adelbert Kline, and his works with Lovecraft, noted above.
"The Stranger from Kurdistan", published in 1925, was another early story to appear in Weird Tales. This story which featured a dialogue between a certain personage and Satan, was criticised by some readers as blasphemous but proved popular with Weird Tales readers. (Lovecraft professed to find it especially powerful). "The Infidel's Daughter" (1927), a satire on the Ku Klux Klan, also angered some Southern readers, but Wright defended the story.
Price worked in a range of popular genres including science fiction, horror, crime, and fantasy. However, he was best known for adventure stories with Oriental settings and atmosphere. Price also contributed to Farnsworth Wright's short-lived magazine The Magic Carpet (1930–34), along with Kline, Howard, Smith, and other Weird Tales regulars. For Spicy Western Stories, Price wrote a series about a libidinous cowboy, Simon Bolivar Grimes. For Clues Detective Stories, Price created a series centering on Pâwang Ali, a Malaysian detective in Singapore.
Like many other pulp-fiction writers, Price could not support himself and his family on his income from literature. Living in New Orleans in the 1930s, he worked for a time for the Union Carbide Corporation. Nonetheless, he managed to travel widely and maintain friendships with many other pulp writers, including Kline and Edmond Hamilton. On a trip to Texas in the mid-1930s, Price was the only pulp writer to meet Robert E. Howard face to face. He was also the only man known to have met in person Howard and also H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (the great "Triumvirate" of Weird Tales writers). Over the course of his long life, Price made reminiscences of many significant figures in pulp fiction, Howard, Lovecraft, and Hamilton among them.
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E. Hoffmann Price
Edgar Hoffmann Trooper Price (July 3, 1898 – June 18, 1988) was an American writer of popular fiction (he was a self-titled "fictioneer") for the pulp magazine marketplace. He collaborated with H. P. Lovecraft on "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".
Price was born at Fowler, California. During his early years, he became interested in China as a result of his interactions with a Chinese salesman in his hometown. As a form of punishment, his mother once threatened to leave Price with the salesman. Price did not see this as a punishment. His interest in China also had a sexual aspect. His wife later noted that "Oriental women fascinate [him]".
Price served with the American military in Mexico and the Philippines, before being sent to France with the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. He was a champion fencer and boxer, an amateur Orientalist, and a student of the Arabic language; science-fiction author Jack Williamson, in his 1984 autobiography Wonder's Child, called E. Hoffmann Price a "real live soldier of fortune".
Originally intending to be a career soldier, Price graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1923. Starting in 1924, Price took a job with Union Carbide at a plant outside New Orleans. He purchased a typewriter and in his spare time started to write stories. After numerous rejections, he sold his first piece, “Triangle with Variations,” to the magazine Droll Stories in 1924, followed quickly by the first of scores of acceptances by Weird Tales, "The Rajah's Gift" (January 1925).
In 1932 Price was fired from his Union Carbide job and turned to writing full time. He moved to Manhattan and began to write extensively for pulp magazines. In his literary career, Hoffmann Price produced fiction for a wide range of publications, from Argosy to Terror Tales, from Speed Detective to Spicy Mystery Stories. Yet he was most readily identified as a Weird Tales writer, one of the group who wrote regularly for editor Farnsworth Wright. Price was part of a loose group of friends that included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Price published 24 solo stories in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1950, plus three collaborations with Otis Adelbert Kline, and his works with Lovecraft, noted above.
"The Stranger from Kurdistan", published in 1925, was another early story to appear in Weird Tales. This story which featured a dialogue between a certain personage and Satan, was criticised by some readers as blasphemous but proved popular with Weird Tales readers. (Lovecraft professed to find it especially powerful). "The Infidel's Daughter" (1927), a satire on the Ku Klux Klan, also angered some Southern readers, but Wright defended the story.
Price worked in a range of popular genres including science fiction, horror, crime, and fantasy. However, he was best known for adventure stories with Oriental settings and atmosphere. Price also contributed to Farnsworth Wright's short-lived magazine The Magic Carpet (1930–34), along with Kline, Howard, Smith, and other Weird Tales regulars. For Spicy Western Stories, Price wrote a series about a libidinous cowboy, Simon Bolivar Grimes. For Clues Detective Stories, Price created a series centering on Pâwang Ali, a Malaysian detective in Singapore.
Like many other pulp-fiction writers, Price could not support himself and his family on his income from literature. Living in New Orleans in the 1930s, he worked for a time for the Union Carbide Corporation. Nonetheless, he managed to travel widely and maintain friendships with many other pulp writers, including Kline and Edmond Hamilton. On a trip to Texas in the mid-1930s, Price was the only pulp writer to meet Robert E. Howard face to face. He was also the only man known to have met in person Howard and also H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (the great "Triumvirate" of Weird Tales writers). Over the course of his long life, Price made reminiscences of many significant figures in pulp fiction, Howard, Lovecraft, and Hamilton among them.