Hugh B. Cave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hugh Barnett Cave (July 11, 1910–June 27, 2004) was a prolific writer of pulp fiction who later wrote for major magazines and came to author both novels and major works of nonfiction. Though he wrote short stories in nearly all genres, he is best remembered for his horror and crime pieces.
Born in Chester, England, he moved during his childhood with his family to Boston, Massachusetts, following the outbreak of World War I. His first name was in honor of Hugh Walpole, a favorite author of his mother, a nurse, who had once known Rudyard Kipling.
Sources differ as to when Cave sold his first story: some say it was while he still attended Brookline High School, others cite "Island Ordeal," written at age 19 in 1929 while he was working for a vanity press. In any case, after graduating from high school, Cave attended Boston University on a scholarship but had to leave when his father was severely injured. At age 20 he was able to quit his vanity press job, the only job he would ever have, and write for a living.
In his early career he contributed to such pulp magazines as Astounding, Black Mask, and Weird Tales. By his own estimate, in the 1930s alone, he published roughly 800 short stories in nearly 100 periodicals under a number of pseudonyms. Of particular interest during this time was his series featuring an independent gentleman of courageous action and questionable morals called simply The Eel. These adventures appeared in the late 1930s and early 40s under the pen name Justin Case. Cave was also one of the most successful contributors to the weird menace or "shudder pulps" of the 1930s.
During World War II Cave travelled as a reporter around the Pacific and in Southeast Asia. In 1943 he authored one of his most highly regarded novels, Long Were the Nights, telling of the first PT boats at Guadalcanal.
After the war he lived for five years in Haiti, becoming so familiar with the religion of Voodoo that he published Haiti: High Road to Adventure, a nonfiction work critically acclaimed as the "best report on voodoo in English." In Jamaica he rebuilt and managed a successful coffee plantation. These Caribbean experiences led to his best-selling Voodoo-themed novel, The Cross On The Drum (1959), an interracial story in which a white Christian missionary falls in love with a black Voodoo priest's sister.
During this midpoint in his career Cave advanced his writing to the "slick" magazines, including Colliers, Family Circle, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, and the Saturday Evening Post. It was in this latter publication, in 1959, that "The Mission," his most popular short story, appeared—subsequently issued in hardcover by Doubleday, reprinted in textbooks, and translated into a number of languages.
But his career took a dip in the early 1970s when he returned to the United States after the Jamaican government reclaimed his plantation. According to The Guardian, with the golden era of pulp fiction now in the past, Cave's "only regular market was writing romance for women's magazines." He was rediscovered, however, by Karl Edward Wagner, who published Murgunstrumm and Others, a horror story collection that won Cave the 1978 World Fantasy Award. Other collections followed and Cave also published new horror fiction.
His later career included the publication in the 1980s of four successful fantasy novels: The Dead, The Evil, The Nebulon Horror, and Shades of Evil. Two other notable late works are Lucifer's Eye (1991) and The Mountains of Madness (2004). Moreover, Cave took naturally to the Internet, championing the e-book to such an extent that electronic versions of his stories can readily be purchased online.
Over his entire career he wrote more than 1,000 short stories, approximately 40 novels, and a notable body of nonfiction. He received the Phoenix Award as well as lifetime achievement awards from the International Horror Guild, the Horror Writers Association, and the World Fantasy Convention.
Hugh Cave was twice married, first to Margaret Long in a union that produced two sons before the couple began living apart, and Peggy (or Peggie) Thompson, who died in 2001. Cave was 93 when he died in Vero Beach, Florida, in 2004. His remains were cremated.
[edit] References
- Cave, Hugh B., Escapades of the Eel, Chicago: Tattered Pages Press, 1977 (ISBN 1-884449-06-9)
- Dill, Timothy Ray, "An Interview with Hugh Cave" (PDF), Pulp Fiction Monthly, January 1997
- The FictionMags Index
- The Phoenix Award
- "Published Pulp Stories by Hugh B. Cave" at Black Mask Magazine
- Williams, John, "Hugh B. Cave: Author of horror, crime, fantasy and adventure from pulp fiction's golden era," obituary in the Guardian, July 10, 2004.
