A. Merritt

2 universes Last reviewed 2026-09-29

Abraham Grace Merritt, known professionally as A. Merritt, was born on January 20, 1884, in Beverly, New Jersey, and moved to Philadelphia in 1894. Originally trained in law, he shifted to journalism, working first as a correspondent and eventually as an editor; he served as assistant editor of The American Weekly from 1912 to 1937 under Morrill Goddard and subsequently became its editor until his death, becoming one of the best-paid journalists of his era, earning $25,000 annually by 1919 and $100,000 by the 1940s. In this journalistic role he hired illustrators Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok and helped promote the polio research of Sister Elizabeth Kenny. His fiction career spanned 1917 to 1943 and produced eight novels along with numerous short stories, including The Moon Pool (1918), The Metal Monster (1920), The Ship of Ishtar (1924), Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), and Burn Witch Burn! (1932), all marked by a lush, florid prose style and elaborate descriptive passages characteristic of pulp fantasy's golden age. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, and his work directly influenced H.P. Lovecraft and Richard Shaver; Gary Gygax later listed Merritt among the key inspirations for Dungeons & Dragons in the game's 'Appendix N.' Merritt died of a heart attack on August 21, 1943, at Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, at the age of fifty-nine.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Moon Pool (1919) · The Moon Pool Core Canon
• The Ship of Ishtar (1924) · The Ship of Ishtar Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 2 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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