The Ape, the Idiot & Other People

William Chambers Morrow was an American writer best known for his short stories of horror and suspense. He is probably best known for the widely anthologized story "His Unconquerable Enemy" (1889), about the relentless vengeance of a servant whose limbs had been removed on the orders of a cruel Rajah. W. C. Morrow was born in Selma, Alabama, on July 7, 1854. His father was a Baptist minister who owned a farm and a hotel in Mobile. The family lost its slaves during the American Civil War, and by 1876, the young Morrow was running the hotel after graduating from Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham at the age of fifteen. Morrow relocated to California in 1879 and began selling stories to The Argonaut, where Ambrose Bierce had recently finished a two-year stint. Bierce was a fan of Morrow's stories (in one of his squibs, a nervous reader declares, "I have one of Will Morrow's tales in my pocket, but I don't dare to go where there is light enough to read it"), and in 1887 likely advised William Randolph Hearst to approach Morrow for material for the San Francisco Examiner. Several of Morrow's most significant stories were published in this newspaper.