W. F. Harvey

William Fryer Harvey AM (14 April 1885 – 4 June 1937), known as W. F. Harvey, was an English writer of short stories, most notably in the macabre and horror genres. Among his best-known stories are "August Heat" and "The Beast with Five Fingers" (1919), described by horror historian Les Daniels as "minor masterpieces".

Early life and education Born into a wealthy Quaker family in Leeds, West Yorkshire, he attended the Quaker Bootham School in Yorkshire and Leighton Park School in Reading before going on to Balliol College, Oxford. He took a degree in medicine at Leeds. Ill health dogged him, however, and he devoted himself to personal projects such as his first book of short stories, Midnight House (1910). He received lung damage during his award-winning rescue operation. The damage troubled him for the rest of his life, but he continued to write both short stories and his cheerful and good-natured memoir We Were Seven (1936).

Posthumous publications

The release of the film The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), directed by Robert Florey and starring Peter Lorre, inspired by what was perhaps his most famous and praised short story, caused a resurgence of interest in Harvey's work. In 1951 a posthumous fourth collection of his stories, The Arm of Mrs Egan and Other Stories, appeared, including a set of twelve stories left in manuscript at the time of his death, headed "Twelve Strange Cases".

In 2009 Wordsworth Editions printed an omnibus volume of Harvey's stories, titled The Beast with Five Fingers, in its Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural series . The volume contains 45 stories and an introduction by David Stuart Davies.

Publications Midnight House and Other Tales (1910) The Misadventures of Athelstan Digby (1920) A Conversation About God (1923), with William Fearon Halliday The Beast with Five Fingers and Other Tales (1928) Quaker Byways and Other Papers (1929) Moods and Tenses: Tales (1933) The Mysterious Mr. Badman (1934) John Rutty of Dublin, Quaker Physician (1934), reprinted from The Friends' Quarterly Examiner We Were Seven (1936) Caprimulgus (1936) Mr. Murray and the Boococks (1938) Midnight Tales (1946) – a selection of twenty macabre tales from earlier collections, published by J. M. Dent The Arm of Mrs. Egan and Other Stories (1951) – previously uncollected stories, mainly mysteries, published by J. M. Dent The Double Eye (2009), introduction by Richard Dalby The Beast with Five Fingers: Supernatural Stories (2009), selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies, published by Wordsworth Editions