Charles G. Finney

For the American Christian minister, see Charles Grandison Finney.

Charles G. Finney (December 1, 1905 – April 16, 1984) was an American fantasy novelist and newspaperman. His full name was Charles Grandison Finney, evidently in honor of his great-grandfather, famous evangelist Charles Grandison Finney.

Biography

Finney was born in Sedalia, Missouri and served in China with the United States Army's 15th Infantry Regiment (E Company)^[1] 1927–1929. In his memoirs, he notes that his first novel (and most famous book) The Circus of Dr. Lao was conceived in Tientsin in 1929. After the Army, he worked for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona, 1930–1970, as an editor.^[2]

Various of Finney's papers, with correspondence and photographs, are collected at the University of Arizona Main Library Special Collections, Collection Number: AZ 024, Papers of Charles G. Finney, 1959-1966, including typed manuscripts of "A Sermon at Casa Grande", "Isabelle the Inscrutable", "Murder with Feathers", ""The Night Crawler", "Private Prince", "An Anabasis in Minor Key", "The Old China Hands", and "The Ghosts of Manacle".

Influence

Finney's work, especially The Circus of Dr. Lao, has been highly influential on subsequent writers of fantasy. Ray Bradbury admired the novel and anthologised it in his collection The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories; Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes shares with Dr. Lao the setting of a supernatural circus. Arthur Calder-Marshall's The Fair to Middling (1959), Tom Reamy's Blind Voices (1978), ^[3], Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn (1968) ^[4] and Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City (2009) ^[5] were all influenced by Finney's work.

Selected works

Books

• The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935)
• The Unholy City (1937)
• Past the End of the Pavement, a collection (1939)
• The Ghosts of Manacle, a collection (1964)
• The Old China Hands, memoirs (1961)
• The Magician Out of Manchuria (1968)

Short stories

• "A Sermon at Casa Grande" in Point West, September, 1963
• "Isabelle the Inscrutable" in Harper's, 228:1367 (April 1964) pp. 51-58.
• "Murder with Feathers" in Harper's 232:1391 (April 1966) pp. 112-113.
• "The Night Crawler" in The New Yorker, December 5, 1959.
• "Private Prince" in The New Yorker, June 24, 1961.
• "An Anabasis in Minor Key" in The New Yorker, March 26, 1960.

Further reading

• "Charles G. Finney" in Contemporary Authors, published by Thomson Gale.
• Great SF & Fantasy Works - Charles G Finney at http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/CharlesGFinney.php

External links

• Author and Book Info.com
• Charles G. Finney at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

References

1. ^ Finney, Charles (1961). The Old China Hands. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. p59
2. ^ NYT obituary http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DD1538F93AA25757C0A962948260
3. ^ "Finney, Charles G." in Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. Scarecrow Press, 2005 (p.150) .
4. ^ Cathy Dunn MacRae. Presenting Young Adult Fantasy Fiction .Twayne Publishers, 1998 (p.324).
5. ^ Renaud, Jeffrey. "Lethem Exits the Unknown with Omega", Comic Book Resources, 2008-07-18. Retrieved on 2010-06-21.

Persondata
Name	Finney, Charles G.
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 1, 1905
Place of birth
Date of death	April 16, 1984
Place of death