Anthony Boucher
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Anthony Boucher (born William Anthony Parker White) (August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968) was an American science fiction editor and writer of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of (mostly) mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to Anthony Boucher, White also employed the pseudonyms Herman W. Mudgett and H. H. Holmes, which were the name and alias, respectively, of a 19th-century serial killer.
White was born in Oakland, California, and went to college at the University of Southern California. He later received a Masters degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He was admired for his mystery writing but was most noted for his editing, his science fiction anthologies, and his mystery reviews for many years in The New York Times. He was the first English translator of Jorge Luis Borges, translating "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan" for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He helped found the Mystery Writers of America in 1946 and, in the same year, was one of the first winners of the MWA's Edgar Award for his mystery reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle. He was founding editor (with J. Francis McComas) of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1949 to 1958, and was seminal in attempting to make literary quality an important aspect of science fiction. He won the Hugo award for Best Professional Magazine in 1957 and 1958. Boucher also edited the long-running Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction anthology series, 1952-1959.
