Leiber, Fritz

Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was born in Chicago on December 24, 1910 to Shakespearean actors Fritz Leiber, Sr. and Virginia Bronson Leiber. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932 with a degree in psychology and physiology, and, in 1936, married Jonquil Stephens, a British poet with similar interests in the supernatural. They had one son, Justin Leiber, in 1938. Several years after Jonquil's death in 1969, he married Margo Skinner. His employment throughout the years included editorial positions and teaching drama, yet Fritz Leiber primarily supported himself with his writing.

Producing stories in the genres of fantasy, science, horror, and supernatural fiction from the mid 1930s until his death in 1992, Fritz Leiber won several prominent fantasy and science fiction awards such as the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Association Awards. Although he wrote numerous stories in variety of styles, Leiber is perhaps best known for the heroic Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser characters he created with his college friend, Harry Otto Fischer (1910-1986), and which he continued to embellish through a series of short stories and novels throughout his long writing career and correspondence with Fischer.

For more information, see:

The encyclopedia of fantasy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.

The encyclopedia of science fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.

Science fiction writers: critical studies of the major authors from the early nineteenth century to the present day. New York: Scribner, c1982.

From the guide to the Fritz Leiber Papers 1984-003., ca. 1930 - 1996, (University of Houston Libraries)