Seabury Grandin Quinn

Seabury Grandin Quinn, born and raised in DC, is best known for his science fiction and fantasy short fiction. He was the most prolific and most popular contributor to the magazine Weird Tales, publishing over a hundred stories that appeared in over half of the total issues. Quinn is the author of the novels Roads (1948) and Alien Flesh (1977); his stories starring the occult detective Jules de Grandin have been collected in ten volumes, and other collections of short fiction include Is the Devil a Gentleman? (1970), The Vagabond-at-Arms (2002), and Demons of the Night (2012). Most of these books were compiled posthumously.

Quinn trained as a lawyer at National University (a forerunner to George Washington University Law School), and specialized in mortuary jurisprudence. In addition to his creative books, he also published the nonfiction books A Syllabus of Mortuary Jurisprudence (1933) and An Encyclopedic Law Glossary for Funeral Directors and Embalmers (1940), and taught the subject at various mortuary schools. Quinn contributed to The American Funeral Director, and for over 15 years, he edited a trade journal for undertakers, Casket & Sunnyside. Under the name Jerome Burke, he published a three-volume memoir, This I Remember: The Memoirs of a Funeral Director, which collected the columns written for De-Ce-Co Magazine, published by the Dodge Chemical Company, which manufactures embalming chemicals.

Quinn served in the U.S. Army in WWI and as a government lawyer in WWII. A series of strokes forced him into semi-retirement in the 1950s. He is buried in Glenwood Cemetery.