W. W. Jacobs was one of the most popular English humorists of the early twentieth century, though he is best remembered today for his horror classic "The Monkey's Paw." The major part of Jacobs's work consists of stories about seamen on the Thames wharfs, and he is particularly noted for his quiet, unadorned style and droll humor, as well as for his vivid depiction of seaport life. Occasionally criticized for a lack of intellectual substance in his fiction, Jacobs has been more properly appreciated for his simple, unpretentious humor. Jacobs was born into a family of modest means, the son of a Thames wharf manager, on September 8, 1863. He grew up literally on the docks of Wapping in London--the family home stood on a wharf--and forged in the process an unbreakable tie with, if not the sea, then the nautical culture of sailors, dock-workers, and the bargemen of the river. Jacobs attended "private" schools: prestigious, expensive upper-class boarding schools were in those days called "public" schools, whereas a "private" school was a considerably less impressive affair, run as a business by an entrepreneurial proprietor. Graduates of these schools filled the ranks of bookkeepers, clerks, secretaries, and other minor white-collar occupations in England's commercial and industrial concerns. At the age of sixteen Jacobs left school to take a position in the civil service. He became a clerk at the Post Office Savings Bank and rapidly developed an extreme distaste for the work. It was possibly out of a frustration with his "captivity," as he called it, that he began to write.
