Carl Richard Jacobi

Carl Richard Jacobi was an American journalist and writer. He wrote short stories in the horror and fantasy genres for the pulp magazine market, appearing in such pulps of the bizarre and uncanny as Thrilling, Ghost Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Strange Stories. He also wrote stories crime and adventure which appeared in such pulps as Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, Top-Notch, Short Stories, The Skipper, Doc Savage and Dime Adventures Magazine. Jacobi also produced some science fiction, mainly space opera, published in such magazines as Planet Stories. He was one of the last surviving pulp-fictioneers to have contributed to the legendary American horror magazine Weird Tales during its "glory days" (the 1920s and 1930s). His stories have been translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch.

Jacobi was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1908 and lived there throughout his life. He was a lifelong bachelor. He was a voracious reader at an early age, reading Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells as well as the Frank Merriwell and Tom Swift boys' adventure yarns. Jacobi was always a writer; at his junior high school he earned good pocket-money concocting his own 'dime novels' (short story booklets) and selling them to fellow students as 10 cents-a-piece.

Debilitating illness crippled Jacobi during the final half-decade of his life, although his literary agent and biographer R. Dixon Smith did much to alleviate his various afflictions.

Jacobi died at St Louis Park, Minnesota on 25 August 1997.

A memorial for him was held at the Arcana (convention) 27, Sept 26-28, 1997 at the Holiday Inn Express Bandana Square, Minneapolis.