Irish author, William Maginn (1793-1842), has penned the next classic horror short story in this countdown. Maginn was a journalist by trade who bounced around to various magazines while contributing articles that were of interest to his generation. While this only yielded him a meager living, his strength rested in writing short stories and poems. Unfortunately, he only wrote a few short stories. His novella Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady is considered by many to be one of the funniest Irish tales during this period. Maginn published a few articles and stories under his pseudonyms "R. T. Scott" and "Sir Morgan O'Doherty." This is what The International Library of Famous Literature for 1899 had to say about him:
[william Maginn, Irish man of letters and typical bohemian, was born in Dublin, July 10, 1793. The son of an eminent schoolmaster, he carried on the school himself after graduation from Trinity College, Dublin, meanwhile becoming a voluminous contributor to Blackwood's and other periodicals under various pseudonyms (finally fixing on "Morgan O'Doherty"), suggesting the "Noctes Ambrosianjae" and writing some of it, and in 1823 settling in London for a literary life. He was Murray's chief man on the Representative; its foreign correspondent in Paris; returning, was joint editor of the Standard, then on the scurrilous Age. He founded Fraser's Magazine in 1830, and made it the most brilliant in Great Britain; contributed to Blackwood's and Bentley's later; and in 1838 he wrote the "Homeric Ballads" for Fraser's. His literary feuds were endless and savage. After running down for years and once being in a debtor's prison (Thackeray portrays him as "Captain Shandon" in "Pendennis"), he died August 21, 1842.]
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