Barry Pain
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| Born |
28 September 1864 Cambridge |
| Died | 5 May 1928 (aged 63) |
Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 September 1864 – 5 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet and writer.
Born in Cambridge, Barry Pain was educated at Sedbergh School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a prominent contributor to The Granta. He was known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories.
In 1889, Cornhill Magazine's editor, James Payn, published his story "The Hundred Gates", and shortly afterwards Pain became a contributor to Punch and The Speaker, and joined the staffs of the Daily Chronicle and Black and White. Pain supposedly "owes his discovery to Robert Louis Stevenson, who compares him to De Maupassant". From 1896 to 1928 he was a regular contributor to the Windsor Magazine. He died in Bushey, in Hertfordshire and is buried in Bushey churchyard.
Pain's works include :
Stories Barry Told Me by his daughter, Eva (Mrs T.L. Eckersley) was published in 1927.
Stories in the Dark and Stories In Grey contain several of Pain's horror stories, including the famous "The Moon-Slave".
Alfred Noyes was a friend of Pain's and for several summers they were near neighbours at Rottingdean. In Noyes' autobiography, one of the longest chapters is devoted to Pain.
Noyes particularly admired Pain's novel The Exiles of Faloo, of which he writes: "It is the story of an island in the Pacific, to which a number of scoundrels of various kinds, together with other men not entirely scoundrels but broken by the law, had escaped 'beyond the law's pursuing.' They establish a Club, with rules designed for the circumstances, one of which naturally was that no credit should be given. Gradually, through the original flaws in character, the society ends disastrously in conflict with the native population. There is humour and heroism, beauty and tragedy in the tale and, like all great stories, it is a parable".
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