Some of his works include material that links him to such local-color and regional writers as Sherwood Anderson, Eudora Welty, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Perhaps even more important than his work within various traditions is that he has mapped out new areas in American literature by combining supernatural horror with careful analysis of small-town life and by mingling sword-and-sorcery fantasy with science fiction.
Born in Portland, Maine, on 21 September 1947, King is the second son of Donald Edwin King, a master mariner in the U.S. Merchant Marine, and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. His father abandoned the family when King was two, and King remembers nothing of him except for finding a box of his books (paperbacks from the 1940s, including a sampler of stories from Weird Tales magazine and stories by H. P. Lovecraft) in 1959 or 1960, an experience he relates in Danse Macabre (1981). King's mother was more influential, reading to him and later encouraging him to submit his manuscripts to publishers. She died of cancer in 1973, before King was recognized as a writer. He has dedicated two books to her, including Dolores Claiborne (1993).
King, his mother, and his older brother, David Victor, lived with relatives in Durham, Maine; Malden, Massachusetts; Chicago; West De Pere, Wisconsin; Stratford, Connecticut; and Fort Wayne, Indiana.
