Barry Pain
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Born |
Cambridge | 28 September 1864
Died | 5 May 1928 63) | (aged
Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 September 1864 – 5 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet and writer.
Biography
Born in Cambridge, Barry Pain was educated at Sedbergh School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.[1] He became a prominent contributor to The Granta. He was known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories.[2]
In 1889, Cornhill Magazine's editor, James Payn, published his story "The Hundred Gates", and shortly afterwards Pain became a contributor to Punch and The Speaker, and joined the staffs of the Daily Chronicle and Black and White.[2] Pain supposedly "owes his discovery to Robert Louis Stevenson, who compares him to De Maupassant".[3] From 1896 to 1928 he was a regular contributor to the Windsor Magazine. He died in Bushey, in Hertfordshire and is buried in Bushey churchyard.
Pain's works include :
- In a Canadian Canoe (1891), papers reprinted from The Granta;
- Playthings and Parodies (1892);
- The Kindness of the Celestial (1894);
- The Octave of Claudius (1897);
- Eliza (1900);
- Another English Woman's Love Letters (1901);[2]
- Stories in the Dark (1901);
- The Shadow of the Unseen (1907);
- The Exiles of Faloo (1910);
- An Exchange of Souls (1911);
- Stories In Grey (1911);
- Marge Askinforit (1920);
- Going Home (1921) - a sentimental fantasy story about a winged man;[4]
- Dumphry (1927)
Stories in the Dark and Stories In Grey contain several of Pain's horror stories, including the famous "The Moon-Slave".
Alfred Noyes was a friend of Pain's and for several summers they were near neighbours at Rottingdean. In Noyes' autobiography, one of the longest chapters is devoted to Pain.[5]
Noyes particularly admired Pain's novel The Exiles of Faloo, of which he writes: "It is the story of an island in the Pacific, to which a number of scoundrels of various kinds, together with other men not entirely scoundrels but broken by the law, had escaped 'beyond the law's pursuing.' They establish a Club, with rules designed for the circumstances, one of which naturally was that no credit should be given. Gradually, through the original flaws in character, the society ends disastrously in conflict with the native population. There is humour and heroism, beauty and tragedy in the tale and, like all great stories, it is a parable".[6]
An Exchange of Souls is credited with being inspirational to H. P. Lovecraft, specifically in his short story "The Thing on the Doorstep".
In 2006, Hippocampus Press re-published An Exchange of Souls together with Henri Béraud's Lazarus.
Adaptations
- In 1992 BBC2 adapted twelve of the stories from Eliza as "Life With Eliza", a series of 10-minute Edwardian comic monologues, featuring Sue Roderick as Eliza and John Sessions as her husband.
- In 2006 Eliza was serialised by BBC Radio 4.
Notes
- ↑ "Pain, Barry Eric Odell (PN883BE)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pain, Barry". Encyclopædia Britannica 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 456.
- ↑ "Short stories Dickensesque". The Independent. 28 Dec 1914. Retrieved 28 July 2012.
- ↑ Clute 1997, p. 742.
- ↑ Noyes 1953, p. 161-176.
- ↑ Noyes 1953, pp. 161-2.
References
- Clute, John (1997). "Pain, Barry (Eric Odell)". In Clute, John; Grant, John. Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Orbit. p. 742.
- Noyes, Alfred (1953). Two Worlds for Memory. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. pp. 161–176.
External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Barry Pain |
- Works by Barry Pain at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Barry Pain at Internet Archive
- Works by Barry Pain at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Author and Book Info.com
- Dictionary of Literary Biography
- Review of Pain's novels The Octave of Claudius and An Exchange of Souls, written by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
- N. T. P. Murphy, ‘Pain, Barry Eric Odell (1864–1928)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 2 Jan 2008
- Barry Pain at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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