W. W. Jacobs, remembered today almost exclusively for his horror story "The Monkey's Paw" (The Lady of the Barge, 1902), was one of the most popular English humorists of the early twentieth century. His stories, many of them amusing tales of life along the London docks, were much in demand by magazine publishers, as his name on the cover assured wide sales. The quality of his work was attested to by many writers and critics of his day, such as J. B. Priestley, Evelyn Waugh, G. K. Chesterton, V. S. Pritchett, Arnold Bennett, Henry Reed, and fellow humorists Jerome K. Jerome and P. G. Wodehouse, who admitted being a "disciple" of Jacobs. During his early and most productive years he wrote more stories than he acknowledged, many appearing anonymously or signed only with his initials; but then he produced, under his own name, about 158 stories, two novellas, and five full-length novels.
