Seabury Quinn
Seabury Grandin Quinn ( also known under the pseudonym Jerome Burke; * December 1889 in Washington, DC; † 24 December 1969 ) was an American genre writer. He was best known for his stories about the occult detective Jules de Grandin, who appeared among others in pulp magazines such as Weird Tales. In his profession as a lawyer devoted Seabury Quinn of Legal Medicine. In this field he published literature for morticians and embalmers and served as publisher of journals and as a lecturer at technical schools.
Seabury Quinn was born in Washington, DC, where he also grew up. In 1910 he graduated from the Faculty of Law, National University (now part of George Washington University). After his army service in the First World War, Quinn moved to New York where he his professional work in the legal medicine turned to with a focus on funeral law as a lecturer and editor.
His first published work as a writer was "The Law of the Movies", in The Motion Picture Magazine, Dec 1917. Was followed by other publications in contemporary Pulp Magazines such as Detective Story Magazine, Weird Tales or The Magazine of Horror. In the October issue of Weird Tales in 1925, he introduced the character of the detective Jules de Grandin, about whom he wrote 93 stories in the series which mainly appeared in Weird Tales. Overall, Seabury Quinn was the most prolific author of this magazine, because in 165 of the total 279 issues published an article by him was included. The popularity of Quinn's stories even exceeded that of his contemporaries Robert E. Howard and HP Lovecraft, whose work was posthumously greater attention.
In 1937 he moved back to Washington and was briefly a publisher representative. During the Second World War he worked as a lawyer at government agencies. In addition to this legal activity and detective stories he published under the pseudonym Jerome Burke contributions for a Mortician journal called The Dodge Magazine. These contributions, which were based mostly on anecdotes of morticians, were later under the title "This I Remember: The Memoirs of a Funeral Director " re-released.
1952 had Seabury Quinn after a series of strokes to finish his career and retired to retire from. This also meant the end for his literary commitment ( his last pulp story, "Master Nicholas " was first published in the winter 1965 issue of The Magazine of Horror). Quinn died on Christmas Eve 1969.