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C. L. Moore
19111987
Henry Kuttner
19151958 |
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Henry Kutiner was born in Los Angeles on April 7, 1915, to Henry Kuttner, a dealer in rare books, and Annie Lewis Kuttner. Kuttner's father died when he was five and his mother and two older brothers moved from San Francisco, where the family had settled, back to Los Angeles. Upon graduating from high school he took a job at a Beverly Hills literary agency and the experience stimulated him to try writing himself. Kuttner had become enamored of fantasy through his reading of L. Frank Baum and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and his earliest efforts were fantasy and horror fiction. His first professional fiction sale, "The Graveyard Rats," appeared in the March 1936 issue of Weird Tales and strongly reflected the influence of his mentor and correspondent H. P. Lovecraft. From that point on, Kuttner attempted to make a living as a writer, trying his hand at many types of popular fiction including science fiction and earning an early reputation as a competent but derivative writer. |
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It was in the pages of Weird Tales that Kuttner first came upon the fiction of C. L. Moore. Catherine Lucille Moore had been born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on January 24, 1911, to Otto Newman Moore, a machinist, and Maude Estelle Jones Moore. Sickly as a child, Moore picked up an early love of reading from her mother, who taught her for many years at home. Moore pursued an interest in romance literature at Indiana University but her education was cut short by the depression. She was working as a secretary at a trust company when she sold her first story, "Shambleau," to Weird Tales. An uncommonly mature space opera with a discreetly erotic subtext, it immediately thrust Moore into the spotlight as a writer of significance. |
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At Lovecraft's behest, Kuttner wrote a fan letter to "Mr. C. L. Moore," unaware initially that the recipient was a woman. A correspondence ensued |
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