Edgar Pangborn (1909 - 1976)

Edgar Pangborn (February 25, 1909 – February 1, 1976) was an American mystery, historical, and science fiction author. Edgar Pangborn was born in New York City on February 25, 1909, to Harry Levi Pangborn, an attorney and dictionary editor, and Georgia Wood Pangborn, a noted writer of supernatural fiction. Along with his older sister Mary, Edgar was homeschooled until 1919 and then educated at Brooklyn Friends School. He began music studies at Harvard University in 1924, when he was still only 15 years old, and left in 1926 without graduating. After that he studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, but did not graduate from that school, either. On leaving he publicly abandoned music, shifting his creative focus to writing. His first novel, a mystery called A-100: A Mystery Story, was published under the pseudonym "Bruce Harrison" in 1930. It was not an auspicious or notably successful debut, and showed none of the emotional or stylistic characteristics that became the hallmark of his later work. Over the next 20 years he wrote numerous stories for the pulp detective and mystery magazines, always under pseudonyms. He also spent three years (1939–1942) farming in rural Maine, and three years (1942–1945) doing his World War II military service in the Pacific with the U.S. Army Medical Corps.