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Mary Elizabeth Counselman (November 19, 1911 – November 13, 1995) was an American writer of short stories and poetry. == Biography == Mary Elizabeth Counselman was born on November 19, 1911 in Birmingham, Alabama. She began writing poetry as a child and sold her first poem at the age of six. She later moved to Gainesville, Georgia, where her father was a faculty member at the Riverside Military Academy.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.arkhamhouse.com/authors.htm )〕 She attended the University of Alabama and Alabama College (now Montevallo University).〔〔 Ms. Counselman's work appeared in ''Weird Tales'', ''Collier's'', ''The Saturday Evening Post'', ''Good Housekeeping'', ''Ladies' Home Journal'', and other magazines.〔 Her stories were dramatized on ''General Electric Theater'' and other national television programs in the USA, Canada, the British Isles, and Australia. Her tale "The Three Marked Pennies", written while she was in her teens, and published in ''Weird Tales'' in 1934, was one of the three most popular in all of ''Weird Tales'' history.〔〔 Readers mentioned it in letters for years after its publication.〔 This oft-reprinted classic tells of a small town whose inhabitants awaken one morning to find anonymous notices posted throughout their city. The posts read: "During this day of April 15, three pennies will find their way into the pockets of the city. On each penny will be a well-defined mark. One is a square; one is a circle; and one is a cross. These three pennies will change hands often, as do all coins, and on the seventh day after this announcement (April 21) the possessor of each marked penny will receive a gift. To the first: $100,000 in cash. To the second: A trip around the world. To the third: Death." Another story, "Seventh Sister" published in ''Weird Tales'' in January 1943, is a rare example of a voodoo story written by a woman.〔 In describing her philosophy of writing horror fiction, she said, "The Hallowe'en scariness of the bumbling but kindly Wizard of Oz has always appealed to me more than the gruesome, morbid fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and those later authors who were influenced by their doom philosophies. My eerie shades bubble with an irrepressible sense of humour, ready to laugh with (never ''at'') those earth-bound mortals whose fears they once shared."〔 Later, Counselman worked as a reporter for ''The Birmingham News''. Counselman taught creative writing classes at Gadsden State Junior College (now the Wallace Drive Campus of Gadsden State Community College) and at the University of Alabama. She completed a novel about witchcraft, and in 1976 received a $6000 National Endowment for the Arts grant. The late August Derleth anthologised her poems in Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre and Fire and Sleet and Candlelight. For most of her life she resided on a houseboat in Gadsden, Alabama,〔 with her husband, Horace B. Vinyard, whom she married in 1941,〔〔 and a large entourage of cats.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mary Elizabeth Counselman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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