Barry Pain
Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 September 18645 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer. Biography. Born in Cambridge, Barry Pain was educated at Sedbergh School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a prominent contributor to "The Granta". He was known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories. In 1889, "Cornhill Magazine"'s editor, James Payn, published his story "The Hundred Gates", and shortly afterwards Pain became a contributor to "Punch" and "The Speaker", and joined the staffs of the "Daily Chronicle" and "Black and White". Pain supposedly "owes his discovery to Robert  Louis Stevenson, who compares him to De Maupassant". From 1896 to 1928 he was a regular contributor to "The Windsor Magazine". He died in Bushey, in Hertfordshire and is buried in Bushey churchyard. Pain's works include : "Stories Barry Told Me" by his daughter, Eva (Mrs T.L. Eckersley) was published in 1927. "Stories in the Dark" and "Stories in Grey" contain several of Pain's horror stories. 'Dark' contains the famous "The Moon-Slave". Alfred Noyes was a friend of Pain's and for several summers they were near neighbours at Rottingdean. In Noyes' autobiography, one of the longest chapters  is devoted to Pain. Noyes particularly admired Pain's novel "The Exiles of Faloo", of which he writes: "It is the story of an island in the Pacific, to which a number of scoundrels of various kinds, together with other men not entirely scoundrels but broken by the law, had escaped 'beyond the law's pursuing.' They establish a Club, with rules designed for the circumstances, one of which naturally was that no credit should be given. Gradually, through the original flaws in character, the society ends disastrously in conflict with the native population. There is humour and heroism, beauty  and tragedy in the tale and, like all great stories, it is a parable". "An Exchange of Souls" is credited with being inspirational to H. P. Lovecraft, specifically in his short story "The Thing on the Doorstep". In 2006, Hippocampus Press re-published "An Exchange of Souls" together with Henri Béraud's "Lazarus".