John Collier wrote more than one hundred short stories, three novels, eight produced movie scripts, a volume of poetry, a modernized dramatic version of John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), and a social history of England in the 1920s, along with many reviews and other minor works; but he is best known for his fantasies. His talent has been compared with that of Lord Dunsany, S. J. Perelman, Anatole France, Sax Rohmer, James Branch Cabell, and--to Collier's dismay--H. H. Munro (Saki). In an unpublished, undated letter to Betty Richardson in which he offered comments to be published in her study of Collier, science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury described Collier as a combination of W. Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, and Evelyn Waugh. The many comparisons point to the difficulty of describing Collier's distinctive style, especially in his stories, which are cool, economical, and witty. As noted motion-picture writer and longtime friend Paul...