Though never quite managing to penetrate the public consciousness to the extent that his contemporary Stephen King has, Peter Straub can still be considered one of the most commercially (and critically) successful genre writers of the past thirty years. He consistently displayed a refreshing willingness to venture beyond the laboured prose and hackneyed situations found in so many examples of modern horror fiction and instead established an impressively varied body of work that combines accessibility with genuine intelligence.
Peter Francis Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the second of March 1943, the son of a salesman and a nurse. He was brought up a Lutheran in what he would later describe as a strict, religious upbringing. At the age of seven, Straub was hit by a car and
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Citation: Murphy, Bernice. "Peter Straub". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 June 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5767, accessed 22 November 2024.]
