A versatile, award-winning writer in many genres, Manly Wade Wellman was born in Angola, West Africa, the son of a medical officer. He graduated from what is now Wichita State University, and earned a bachelor of laws degree from Columbia University. He worked for several years as a newspaper reporter before becoming a free-lance writer. He moved to North Carolina in 1947, settling in Chapel Hill because of the resources available at the University of North Carolina.

On his eightieth birthday, Wellman announced, "Today is my eightieth birthday, and I've written eighty books. That's pretty good, don't you think?" He wrote thirty-five adventure novels for boys, nearly half of them set in North Carolina in the southeastern part of the state, and in the mountains. These include both contemporary mystery/adventure stories and historical novels.

Like his juvenile books, Wellman's adult writings are a mix of history, biography, folklore, fantasy, mystery, and true murders. Although his work has been called science fiction, he successfully blended his varied interests to create a genre now referred to as speculative fiction. His fascination with Appalachian history and folklore form the basis for his fantastic Silver John series, which features a virtuous folk-ballad-singing young hero who battles supernatural forces of evil in the North Carolina mountains, defending the innocent and timid. Wellman's numerous works of speculative fiction also include a Martian murder mystery, tales of loathsome alien invaders, and Twice in Time, the story of a man who falls into the fifteenth century and becomes Leonardo da Vinci.

North Carolina's first, and for many years preëminent writer of speculative fiction, Wellman generously extended aid to emerging writers, teaching classes in creative writing in the Evening College of the University of North Carolina and guiding many of his students to fruitful careers. The younger writers who competed with him in his last years always acknowledged him with great admiration and respect. In 1955 he won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for nonfiction, and was awarded the North Carolina Award for Literature in 1978. North Carolina Literary historian Richard Walser has speculated that Manly Wade Wellman's first Silver John book, Who Fears the Devil?, will be one of the five North Carolina books people will still be reading a hundred years from now.

Excerpt from Sin's Doorway
published in Weird Tales, January 1946

In those days and in that part of the South I tried to keep out of county seats and other towns of any size. Sheriffs and town marshals had a way of rounding up tattered strangers and putting them on chain gangs. That spring I followed a trail, not much more than a footway, between two hills where the live-oaks and the long-leaf pine shoulder themselves into thickets. There would be clearings in the hollows beyond, and a cabin or two of simple people. They'd recognize me, I hoped, for someone sad and hungry. I'd be invited to eat corn bread—fried bacon too, if I was lucky, or a stew of squirrel or rabbit. I had not eaten since the morning before, nor very heartily then. Feeling faint, I knelt to drink from a little pencil-wide stream. When I rose, my legs were not so shaky. Then as I tramped downhill between the path's scrub-grown borders, I heard voices singing an old hymn. Around the bend I walked, and came almost among the people. There were twenty or twenty-five of them, overalled men, and women in homespun dresses and calico sunbonnets, and some shock-headed children. They stood bunched in front of a shabby little clapboard church—I knew it was a church by the tacked-on steeple that housed no bell. Next the church was a grassy burying-ground, with ant-eaten wooden headboards, fenced by stakes and rails. Nobody stood inside the fence. They all faced toward a home-made coffin of whip-sawed pine, rough and unpainted. I hate funerals. I go to as few as I can manage. But I paused to watch this one. Nobody looked sorry or glad, only intent. Beside the coffin stood a tall mountainy man in worn black, with a grizzled chin-tuft that lengthened his hawk-like face. Perhaps Abe Lincoln would have looked like that, if Wilkes Booth had spared him for twenty more years. That was the preacher, I decided, for as the singing died he began to talk. As my eyes turned toward him, I saw two figures squatting on the ground beyond him and the coffin. For a moment I took these to be old carven images, like figureheads from ancient sailing vessels. They looked weathered and colorless, face, hair and clothing. One was a bewhiskered male, the other a wrinkled old female. Neither moved, not even their eyes blinked. But their backs were tense, as though slighting the church. I know Southern folklore, and remembered a bit; witches, the servants of devils, always turn their backs to the house of God. "It was the will and prayer of Levi Brett, our departed...brother...." The preacher stumbled over the word as if he had disliked to speak it. "His will," he went on, "that we call at his burial for someone to eat his sins." I pricked up my ears at that.

After Dark. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980.

Appomattox Road: Final Adventures of the Iron Scouts. New York: Washburn, 1960.

Battle at Bear Paw Gap. New York: Washburn, 1966.

Battle for King's Mountain. New York: Washburn, 1962.

The Beasts from Beyond. Manchester, England: World Distributors, 1950.

The Beyonders. New York: Warner Books, 1977.

Brave Horse: The Story of Janus. Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg, 1968.

Cahena. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986.

Candle of the Wicked. New York: Putnam, 1960.

Carolina Pirate. New York: Ives Washburn, 1968.

A City's Culture: Painting, Music, Literature. Winston-Salem: Historic Winston, 1976.

Clash on the Catawba. New York: Ives Washburn, 1962.

The County of Gaston. With Robert F. Cope. Charlotte: Gaston County Historical Society, 1961.

The County of Moore, 1947-1947. Southern Pines, N.C.: Moore County Historical Society, 1962.

The County of Warren, 1586-1917. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.

The Dary Destroyers. New York: Avalon Books, 1959.

Dead and Gone: Classic Crimes of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954.

A Double Life. Novelization by Wellman of screenplay by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. Chicago: Century Publications, 1947.

Fast Break Five. New York: Ives Washburn, 1971.

Fastest on the River: The Great Race Between the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee. New York: Holt, 1957.

Find My Killer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1947.

Flags on the Levee. New York: Ives Washburn, 1955.

Fort Sun Dance. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1955.

The Founders. Winston-Salem: Historic Winston, 1966.

Frontier Reporter. New York: Ives Washburn, 1969.

The Ghost Battalion: A Story of the Iron Scouts. New York: Ives Washburn, 1958.

Giant in Gray: A Biography of Wade Hampton of South Carolina. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949.

Giants from Eternity. New York: Thomas Bouregy and Co., 1959.

Gray Riders: Jeb Stuart and His Men. New York: Aladdin Books, 1954.

The Hanging Stones. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982.

Harpers Ferry, Prize of War. Charlotte: McNally, 1960.

The Haunts of Drowning Creek. New York: Holiday House, 1951.

Island in the Sky. New York: Avalon Books, 1961.

Jamestown Adventure. New York: Ives Washburn, 1967.

John the Balladeer. Edited by Karl E. Wagner. New York: Baen, 1988.

The Kingdom of Madness: A Southern Mountain Fastness and Its People. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973.

The Last Mammoth. New York: Holiday House, 1953.

The Life and Times of Sir Archie. With Elizabeth A. C. Blanchard. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958.

Lights over Skelton Ridge. New York: Ives Washburn, 1957.

Lonely Vigils. Chapel Hill: Carcosa, 1981.

The Lost and Lurking. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981.

The Master of Scare Hollow. New York: Ives Washburn, 1957.

Mountain Feud. New York: Ives Washburn, 1969.

Mystery at Bear Paw Gap. New York: Ives Washburn, 1964.

The Mystery of Lost Valley. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1948.

Napoleon of the West: A Story of the Aaron Burr Conspiracy. New York: Ives Washburn, 1970.

Not at These Hands. New York: Putnam, 1962.

The Old Gods Waken. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1979.

The Raiders of Beaver Lake. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1950.

Rebel Boast: First at Bethel, Last at Apppomattox. New York: Henry Holt, 1956.

Rebel Mail Runner. New York: Holiday House, 1954.

The Rebel Songster: Songs the Confederates Sang. Charlotte, N.C.: Heritage House, 1959.

Ride, Rebels!: Adventures of the Iron Scouts. New York: Ives Washburn, 1959.

Rifles at Ramsour's Mill: A Tale of the Revolutionary War. New York: Ives Washburn, 1961.

The River Pirates. New York: Ives Washburn, 1963.

Romance in Black. Written under pseudonym Gans T. Field. London: Utopian Publications, n.d.

The School of Darkness. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985.

Settlement on Shocco: Adventures in Colonial Carolina. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 1963.

Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds. With Wade Wellman. New York: Warner Books, 1975.

The Sleuth Patrol. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1947.

Sojarr of Titan. New York: Crestwood Publishing Co., 1941.

The South Fork Rangers. New York: Ives Washburn, 1963.

The Specter of Bear Paw Creek. New York: Ives Washburn, 1966.

The Story of Moore County. Southern Pines, N.C.: Moore County Historical Association, 1974.

They Took Their Stand: The Founders of the Confederacy. New York: Putnam, 1959.

Third String Center. New York: Ives Washburn, 1960.

To Unknown Lands. New York: Holiday House, 1956.

Twice in Time. New York: Avalon Books, 1957.

The Valley So Low: Southern Mountain Stories. Edited by Karl E. Wagner. New York: Doubleday, 1987.

What Dreams May Come. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983.

Who Fears the Devil? Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1963.

Wild Dogs of Drowning Creek. New York: Holiday House, 1952.

Winston-Salem in History Series. Booklets on Education, Industry and Commerce, 1766-1896, Transportation and Communication, The War Record. Winston-Salem: Historic Winston, 1976.

Worse Things Waiting. Chapel Hill: Carcosa, 1973.

Young Squire Morgan. New York: Ives Washburn, 1956.

Appearances in periodicals, including in:

Amazing Stories, Astonishing Stories, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, If, New East, North Carolina Historical Review, Tar Heel, Weird Tales.

Tribute to Manly Wade Wellman. Proceedings of the North Carolina Writers Conference Dinner Honoring Wellman, July 15, 1982. In Pembroke, No. 15 (1983).

Links to further information:

Manly Wade Wellman Obituary