Helen Eustis (1916–2015)
Author of The Horizontal Man
About the Author
Helen Eustis was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 31, 1916. She graduated from Smith College in 1938. She was pursuing a doctorate in English at Columbia University, when she gave up her studies in favor of a writing career. She wrote for several magazines in the 1940s including Harper's show more Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and The New Yorker. Her first novel, The Horizontal Man, won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for best first novel in 1947. Her other works included The Captains and the Kings Depart, The Redheaded Woman, and The Fool Killer, which was adapted into a 1965 film starring Anthony Perkins and Edward Albert. She also translated books written in French by authors including Christiane Rochefort and Georges Simenon. She died on January 11, 2015 at the age of 98. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Cut down scan from back cover of Penguin No.718. Unattributed photo.
Works by Helen Eustis
Associated Works
Gentlemen, Scholars and Scoundrels: A Treasury of the Best of Harper's Magazine from 1850 to the Present (1972) — Contributor — 61 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Eustis, Helen White
- Other names
- Harris, Helen Eustis
- Birthdate
- 1916-12-31
- Date of death
- 2015-01-11
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
- Place of death
- Manhattan, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Education
- Smith College (BA | 1938)
Columbia University - Occupations
- mystery writer
translator
short story writer
novelist - Short biography
- Helen Eustis was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mother Bessie Langdon Eustis died when her daughter was a young child, and she was raised by her father, Harold Eustis, a socially prominent stockbroker. She began writing as a child. She graduated from Smith College, where she won a creative writing award, with a degree in English literature in 1938. That year, she married Alfred Young Fisher, her English professor, with whom she had a son. She pursued a doctorate in English at Columbia University in New York City before giving up her studies in favor of a writing career. Ms. Eustis began contributing stories to Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, and other magazines in the 1940s. She published a collection of stories, The Captains and the Kings Depart, in 1949. A children’s story, "The Rider on a Pale Horse," which first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1950, later became a children's book titled Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman (1954). Her college experiences inspired her debut novel The Horizontal Man (1947), a mystery set at a small college in which a philandering English professor is murdered amid psychologically unstable students and professors. The book received critical acclaim and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America the following year. At about that time, her marriage to Prof. Fisher broke down, and they divorced. Ms. Eustis’s other works, a novel and several short stories, often contained elements of psychological drama. Her Civil War thriller The Fool Killer (1954) was adapted into a 1965 Hollywood film of the same name. In later years, she translated works from French by authors such as Christiane Rochefort, Georges Simenon, Romain Gary, Michel Salomon, and Edmonde Charles-Roux.
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Statistics
- Works
- 4
- Also by
- 7
- Members
- 213
- Popularity
- #104,444
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 9
- Languages
- 2
I read it as one of the novels bundled in the Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s, edited by Sarah Weinman. The other authors are: Vera Caspary (Laura), Dorothy B. Hughes (In A Lonely Place), and Elizabeth Sanxay Holding (The Blank Wall).
Eustis (1916-2015) attended Smith College and did graduate work at Columbia. She wrote several novels and stories in addition to "The Horizontal Man", including a Civil War novel, "The Fool Killer" which in 1965 was made into a film starring Anthony Perkins. In her latter years, Eustis translated several important books from French including "When I was Old" by Georges Simeon.
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