Amelia Reynolds Long | |
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Born | Columbia, Pennsylvania | November 25, 1904
Died | March 26, 1978 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania | (aged 73)
Pen name | Peter Reynolds (sometimes with William L. Crawford) |
Occupation |
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Nationality | American |
Genre | Detective fiction, Science fiction |
Amelia Reynolds Long (detective fiction writer, novelist, and a pioneer woman writer for the early science fiction magazines of the 1930s.
November 25, 1904 – March 26, 1978) was an AmericanBorn in Columbia, Pennsylvania, Long moved at age six with her family to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where she lived the rest of her life.[1]
Long received a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1931, and a master's degree from Penn in 1932.[2] Long was the author of a number of science fiction stories, including "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth" and "Scandal in the Fourth Dimension".[3] Her Weird Tales story, "The Thought-Monster", was made into the 1958 British science fiction film Fiend Without a Face. The story's sale to the film's producers was brokered by her agent Forrest J Ackerman.[4]
Some of her stories appeared under the byline "A. R. Long." Using the combined pseudonym Peter Reynolds, Long co-wrote the 1936 novel Behind the Evidence with William L. Crawford, based on the Lindbergh kidnapping case.[5]
In the 1940s, influenced by Agatha Christie, Long turned from science fiction to writing mysteries. Between 1939 and 1952, she published more than 30 murder mystery novels.[6] In 1951, Long became a textbook editor for Stackpole Books. She also began to write poetry, participating in the Harrisburg Poetry Workshop of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society. Long edited the society's 1977 anthology, Pennsylvania Poems.[7] Later in life, Long worked for 15 years as a curator at the William Penn Memorial Museum.[8]
Long never married or had children. She died in 1978, at age 73.[9]