Michael Cox

Michael Andrew Cox (1948–2009) was an English writer and editor.

Biography Michael Cox was born on 25 October 1948 to parents who worked in the footwear industry.

Cox dedicated both of his novels to Dizzy Crockett, whom he married in 1973. They later had a daughter. and there completed encyclopaedic work: compiling A Dictionary of Writers and their Works (1991) and The Oxford Chronology of English Literature (2002). His first novel, The Meaning of Night, was published in 2006 and was shortlisted for the 2006 Costa first novel award. one of the effects of which was to initiate a temporary burst of mental and physical energy. This, combined with the stark realization that his blindness might return if the treatment wasn't successful, spurred Michael finally to begin writing in earnest the novel that he had been contemplating for over thirty years, and which up to then had only existed as a random collection of notes, drafts, and discarded first chapters. Following surgery, work continued on what is now The Meaning of Night, and in January 2005, after a hotly contested UK auction, it was sold to John Murray (a subdivision of Hodder Headline) for £430,000. Michael Cox died of cancer on 31 March 2009.

Anthologies Edited The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (with R. A. Gilbert), 1986. Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories (by M.R. James), 1987. Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology (with R. A. Gilbert), 1991 (vt. The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, 2003). The Oxford Book of Historical Stories (with Jack Adrian), 1994. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories, 1996. Twelve Tales of the Supernatural, 1997. Twelve Victorian Ghost Stories, 1997.