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Barry Pain was a prolific writer whose career spanned nearly forty years, from the late-Victorian 1880s to the Jazz Age of the 1920s. He was an accomplished essayist, parodist, novelist, short-story writer, and poet. Although best remembered now for his humorous and supernatural short stories, he wrote in several other genres, including science fiction, fantasy, mystery, adventure, and romance.
During his lifetime Pain never really established himself as a writer of serious fiction. The notice of his death in the London Mercury (June 1928) regretfully comments that "he never quite fulfilled his early promise, or did his gifts full justice" because "the diversity of those gifts" prevented him from pursuing a career that would have gained "the sort of reputation that has come to men of far less capacity." Pain's versatility as a writer may have worked against him, the Mercury goes on to note: "the sense of not knowing what sort of fare would be presented between the covers of his latest book" may have made "his lighter work more ephemeral than it need have been."
Barry Eric Odell Pain was born on 28 September 1864 in Cambridge to John Odell Pain, a well-to-do linen draper, and Maria Pain.
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