Fritz Leiber
- FRITZ LEIBER - A black ink and gray pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size vellum paper. It appears on the cover of "STARMONT READER'S GUIDE No. 8".
Fritz Leiber is another of the unfortunate writers who managed to make a name for himself in the fantasy and science fiction field, but was unable to make a decent living doing it. He was born in 1910 to parents who were actors in a traveling road show, "Fritz Leiber's Shakespeare Company". Leiber studied philosophy at the University of Chicago, graduating with honors, and for a short time he was a lay preacher before turning to a writing career. Among his classic works are, "Conjure Wife," and "Gather Darkness". In 1936 he married Jonquil Stephens, and for years he struggled to earn a living at writing while dealing with alchoholism.
When his wife died in 1969, Leiber went on a 3 year binge writing nothing and living a life of poverty on skid row. Others said he was simply penurious and spent whatever money he had on dining out and going to the movies. When he returned to writing he barely earned enough to survive until TSR, the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons (for whom I did a lot of artwork for a while) purchased the printing rights to his "Fafhrd & Gray Mouser" stories. That sale allowed him to spend the final years of his life in relative comfort.
Fritz Leiber died in 1992 at the age of 82. He was an honored writer who produced several classic works in the genre. But though he achieved fame for his work, he deserved a better deal from fate.
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