William Wymark Jacobs (1863-1943) was an English author of short stories and novels. Although much of his work was humorous, he is most famous for his macabre story “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902) and several other ghost stories, including “The Toll House” (1909) and “Jerry Bundler” (1901). “The Monkey’s Paw”, a tale of superstition and terror unfolding within a realistic, Dickensian setting of domestic warmth and coziness, is a felicitous example of Jacobs’s ability to combine everyday life and gentle humour with exotic adventure and dread.