A. M. Burrage facts for kids
Alfred McLelland Burrage (1889–1956) was a British writer. He was noted in his time as an author of fiction for boys which he published under the pseudonym Frank Lelland, including a popular series called "Tufty". After his death, however, Burrage became best known for his ghost stories.
Life and work
Burrage was born in Hillingdon, London, in 1889. His father, Alfred Sherrington Burrage, and his uncle, Edwin Harcourt Burrage, were both prolific writers of magazine stories for boys. Burrage attended St Augustine's Abbey School in Ramsgate. After his father died in 1906, A. M. Burrage began writing fiction, partly to support his family. Burrage's main market for his fiction were British pulp magazines such as The Grand Magazine, The Novel Magazine, Cassell's Magazine and The Weekly Tale-Teller.
He served in the Artists Rifles in the First World War. Burrage's publisher, Victor Gollancz Ltd., later published a memoir of his war experiences, War Is War, as "Ex-Private X". War is War received several good reviews, although it did not sell as well as Gollancz had hoped it would.
For children, Burrage wrote a humorous novel, Poor Dear Esme (1925), about a boy who has disguise himself as a girl and attend a girl's school. Poor Dear Esme was described by Jack Adrian as a "comic classic", and the book was often reprinted. Burrage wrote historical and romance fiction. Burrage's historical fiction was often set in seventeenth-century England, as in the 1936 story "Mr. Codesby's Behaviour".
Burrage is now remembered mainly for his horror fiction, which was originally collected in the books Some Ghost Stories (1927) and Someone in the Room (1931, as by "Ex-Private X") and has been reprinted by Ash-Tree Press.
Burrage was a lapsed Roman Catholic. He died at Edgware General Hospital at the age of sixty-seven 18 December 1956.
Novels
- The St. Austin's Mystery: A Rattling School Story (1908)
- The Cad of the College (1921)
- The Golden Barrier (1925)
Three Chums Rebel of the house For House and School Well played, Sir! Mystery term at Hemming
Collections
- Poor Dear Esme (1925)
- Some Ghost Stories (1927)
- Someone in the Room (1931)
- Seeker to the Dead (1942)
- Don't Break the Seal (1946)
- Between the Minute and the Hour (1967)
Short stories
- George Was a Hero. The Annie Swan Annual, 1935
Critical Studies
- Jack Adrian, "Burrage, A(lfred) M(cLelland)" in David Pringle, St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers. London: St. James Press, 1998,
- S. T. Joshi, "A. M. Burrage:The Ghost Man" in Classics and Contemporaries (2009).
