Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich (New York, 1903–1968) was an American crime and mystery writer who published under his own name and under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley. He worked through the Jazz Age, the Depression and the postwar years, and he is a central figure in the history of film noir. Few crime writers of his time were adapted to the screen as often as he was.

The only child of a well-off family, he spent part of his childhood in Mexico before returning to New York with his mother. While at Columbia University, a chronic foot infection kept him in bed, and he started writing to pass the time. His first novel, Cover Charge, appeared in 1926, the same year he left college to write full time. His early books followed the manner of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but the Depression cut into sales, and by the early 1930s he had reinvented himself as a writer of mystery stories and pulp fiction. Between 1934 and 1946 he published more than 350 stories, and in 1940 The Bride Wore Black appeared under his own name.

Unlike many rivals, Woolrich did not build his fiction around a recurring detective. His characters are ordinary people caught up in bad luck, guilt or a fate that seems to be working against them. He often told the story from the victim's point of view, frequently in the first person, and he created an atmosphere of dread and loneliness with carefully controlled suspense. For this reason he was sometimes called "the modern Edgar Allan Poe".

His influence is most visible on screen. Alfred Hitchcock adapted his story "It Had to Be Murder" as Rear Window, and François Truffaut filmed The Bride Wore Black in 1968. Robert Siodmak and Jacques Tourneur were among other directors who drew on his work. In his last years he suffered from diabetes and alcoholism, and he died in 1968. He left most of his estate to Columbia University to fund scholarships in his mother's name for writing students.