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Seabury Quinn (January 1, 1889 – December 24, 1969) was an author of weird fiction, best known for his character Jules de Grandin. He graduated from National University law school in 1910, was a veteran of World War I, and spent his life working in the professions of lawyer, teacher, journalist, and author.
Despite devoting most of his life to practicing law, Quinn found time to be a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. Of primary focus for this article is his published fiction, of course, which was only one area of his many professional accomplishments. His first detective stories “Demons of the Night” and “Was She Mad?” appeared in Detective Story Magazine in 1918. His first short story to appear in Weird Tales was “The Phantom Farmhouse” in 1923.
The first of Quinn’s Jules de Grandin stories, “The Horror on the Links,” was published in the October 1925 issue of Weird Tales and was the first of many de Grandin stories. Ninety-two more stories featuring the supernatural detective and his partner Dr. Trowbridge would be published by 1951, 62 of which were published between 1925 and 1936.
Robert A. W. Lowndes (in his introduction to The Casebook of Jules de Grandin, Popular Library 1976) crowns Quinn the most popular author of the Weird Tales golden era. Lin Carter (in his introduction to The Adventures of Jules de Grandin, Popular Library 1976) backs up this claim with evidence from issues of Weird Tales itself. “The Unique Magazine” solicited votes from its readers for their favorite story in each issue and Quinn regularly topped such venerable talents as C. L. Moore, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard. A contemporary of those now-classic authors, Quinn’s popularity never quite reached their heights, but he was never quite forgotten. Overall, he had over 500 short stories published, some of which were collected in Arkham House hardcover editions during his lifetime.
Born Seabury Grandin Quinn, Sr. in 1889, he lived his life and died on Christmas Eve 1969 in Washington D.C., where he was buried at Glenwood Cemetery.
* This article contains corrections from its original format thanks to Bobby D. 🦑 (@Ancient0History) / Twitter.
Interested readers can find Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin stories collected in modern editions published by Night Shade Books, available from Amazon.com at this link.
The following paperbacks are from my personal collection. They were published in 1976-77 by Popular Library.
