Charles Higham (biographer)

Charles Higham (pronounced HYE-um), (18 February 1931 – 21 April 2012) was an English author, editor and poet.

After moving to Australia in 1954, Higham began a career in journalism, before moving to the United States in 1969. In the United States he became known as a celebrity biographer, mainly of film stars, such as Katharine Hepburn and Errol Flynn. The latter book, among several during Higham's career, was criticized for fabrications. Close friends of another of his subjects, Orson Welles, in particular Peter Bogdanovich, were critical of Higham's interpretation of his career.

Born in London, Higham was the son of MP and advertising mogul Sir Charles Higham and his fourth wife, Josephine Janet Keuchenius Webb. Higham's parents divorced when he was three, and thereafter Charles lived with his mother. His father died four years later. After Sir Charles' death the family lived in modest circumstances during and after World War II. Higham published two books of verse in England, before moving to Sydney, Australia in 1954. There he became a journalist and critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and, later, the Sydney Daily Mirror. Higham became literary editor of The Bulletin, the country's leading weekly, in 1964, and published three more collections of verse.

In the 1960s Higham compiled a number of horror anthologies for the Australian publisher Horwitz. The majority of stories in the anthologies were by writers from the US and UK, with many being reprinted from Montague Summers's 1936 anthology The Grimoire and Other Supernatural Stories. Australian writer Terry Dowling acknowledged the influence of Higham's horror anthologies on his own writing in an essay published in Stephen Jones Horror: Another 100 Best Books.

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