John Anthony Bellairs (January 17, 1938 – March 8, 1991) was an American author best known for his fantasy novel The Face in the Frost and many Gothic mystery novels for children featuring the characters Lewis Barnavelt, Rose Rita Pottinger, Johnny Dixon, and Anthony Monday. Most of his books were illustrated by Edward Gorey. At the time of his death, Bellairs' books had sold a quarter-million copies in hard cover and more than a million and a half copies in paperback.

Biography

thumb|Front view of the Cronin House in Marshall, Michigan, which inspired The House with a Clock in Its Walls

Early life and education

Bellairs was born in Marshall, Michigan, the son of Virginia (Monk) and Frank Edward Bellairs, who ran a cigar store and bowling alley in Marshall. He was raised a strict Roman Catholic and initially planned to become a priest. His hometown inspired the fictional town of New Zebedee, Michigan, where he set his trilogy about Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger. Shy, overweight, and often bullied as a child, he had become a voracious reader and a self-described "bottomless pit of useless information" by the time he graduated from Marshall High School

Bellairs graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1959. At Notre Dame, he competed in the College Bowl and wrote a regular humor column for the student magazine Scholastic.

Career and interests

Bellairs taught English at the College of Saint Teresa (1963–65), Shimer College (1966–67), Emmanuel College (1968–69), and Merrimack College (1969–71) before turning full-time to writing in 1971. During the late 1960s, he spent six months living and writing in Bristol, United Kingdom, where he began writing The Face in the Frost. Bristol would later feature in his 1990 novel The Secret of the Underground Room.

His personal interests included archaeology, architecture, history, Latin, baseball, kitschy antiques, bad poetry, visits to the UK, and trivia of all kinds.

Alongside Christopher Tolkien, Bellairs was a guest of honor at the 18th Annual Mythopoeic Conference at Marquette University in 1987, hosted by the Mythopoeic Society.

Death and legacy

Bellairs died suddenly of cardiovascular disease at his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on March 8, 1991, at the age of 53. He was survived by his ex-wife, Priscilla (Braids) Bellairs, whom he had married on June 24, 1968, and their son Frank J. Bellairs. Priscilla Bellairs lives in Newburyport.

In 1992, a historical marker was placed in front of the historic Cronin House in Bellairs's hometown of Marshall, Michigan. Built in 1870 for local merchant Jeremiah Cronin, this imposing Italianate mansion with its 60-foot tower had inspired the titular house of his 1973 book.

Bellairs was inducted into the Haverhill Citizens Hall of Fame in 2000.

The Pedant and the Shuffly, his second book, is a short illustrated fable featuring the evil magician Snodrog (the titular pedant), who ensnares his victims with inescapable (and nonsensical) logic until the kindly sorcerer, Sir Bertram Crabtree-Gore, enlists the help of a magical Shuffly to defeat Snodrog. The book was originally published in 1968 and rereleased in 2001 and 2009.

Bellairs undertook his third book, The Face in the Frost (1969), while living in Britain and after reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Bellairs said of his third book: <blockquote>"The Face in the Frost was an attempt to write in the Tolkien manner. I was much taken by The Lord of the Rings and wanted to do a modest work on those lines. In reading the latter book I was struck by the fact that Gandalf was not much of a person—just a good guy. So I gave Prospero, my wizard, most of my phobias and crotchets. It was simply meant as entertainment and any profundity will have to be read in."</blockquote> Writing in 1973, Lin Carter described The Face in the Frost as one of the three best fantasy novels to appear since The Lord of the Rings. Carter stated that Bellairs was planning a sequel to The Face in the Frost at the time. An unfinished sequel titled The Dolphin Cross was included in the anthology Magic Mirrors (New England Science Fiction Association Press, 2009).

Following the success of The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Bellairs focused on writing Gothic fantasy adventures aimed at elementary and middle-school children. "I write scary thrillers for kids because I have the imagination of a 10-year-old," remarked Bellairs. "I love haunted houses, ghosts, witches, mummies, incantations, secret rituals performed by the light of the waning moon, coffins, bones, cemeteries and enchanted objects." who are friends and must go on adventures and solve a mystery involving supernatural elements such as ghosts and wicked sorcerers. Beyond these supernatural elements, Bellairs's novels evoked "a child's concern with comfort and security in his real world," addressing childhood fears of abandonment, loneliness, and bullying, as well as coming of age. Professor Gary D. Schmidt contended that Bellairs' Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger trilogy traced the "emerging acceptance of self" by the two main characters, who struggled with internalized gender norms. Elizabeth Wein analyzes Bellairs's use of the haunted house motif in The House With a Clock in Its Walls. One of the most substantial academic treatments of Bellairs comes from Dawn Heinecken, professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Louisville. Heinecken situates Bellairs in 1970s-era anxieties about gender and changing discourses around masculinity, which were reflected in the era's children's literature. English education instructor Randi Dickson suggested that Bellairs' oeuvre evidenced greater literary merit than the works of R. L. Stine, whose horror fiction appeals to a youthful demographic similar to Bellairs's. Educators have used The House With the Clock in Its Walls as a case study for using storytelling techniques to draw in reluctant readers and assigned The Curse of the Blue Figurine to students in a book club.

Bellairs' books have been translated into Czech, French, German, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish, among other languages.

Illustrators

Edward Gorey provided cover illustrations and frontispieces for all but three of Bellairs's 15 children's novels and continued to illustrate the Strickland novels until Gorey's death in 2000. The novel The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge featured Gorey's last published artwork before his death. Despite the strong association of the novels with Gorey's illustrations, Bellairs and Gorey never met and probably never even corresponded. co-president of production at Phoenix Pictures; Laeta Kalogridis; and James Vanderbilt announced that they hired Eric Kripke, creator of Supernatural and Revolution, to write and produce a feature film based on John Bellairs' work through a partnership with John's estate. "Jamie, Laeta and I are thrilled to launch Mythology Entertainment and to be partnering with Eric Kripke and the estate of John Bellairs for our first feature project,” Fischer said.<blockquote>“As a kid, Eric was inspired by Bellairs’ work and these books have stayed with him through the years…. As a company, we aspire to be a haven for artists and friends who believe in the power of myth and remember that feeling we all got as kids, when the lights went down and the images came up and anything was possible.”</blockquote>

The film adaptation of Bellairs' novel The House with a Clock in Its Walls stars Jack Black as Uncle Jonathan, Cate Blanchett as Mrs. Zimmerman, and Owen Vaccaro as Lewis Barnavelt, and was directed by Eli Roth. It was released on September 21, 2018.

Audiobooks

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="white-space:nowrap"

!#!!Title!!Year!!Publisher!!Narrator

|-

|style="text-align:center"|01||The Face in the Frost||style="text-align:center"|1995||Recorded Books||George Guidall

|-

|style="text-align:center"|02||The Ghost in the Mirror||style="text-align:center"|1995||Recorded Books||George Guidall

|-

|style="text-align:center"|03||The House with a Clock in Its Walls||style="text-align:center"|1995||Recorded Books||George Guidall

|-

|style="text-align:center"|04||The Lamp from the Warlock's Tomb||style="text-align:center"|1995||Recorded Books||Betty Low

|-

|style="text-align:center"|05||The Mansion in the Mist||style="text-align:center"|1995||Recorded Books||Betty Low

|}

As of September 2022, Blackstone Publishing has re-issued Face In the Frost and all 12 Lewis Barnavelt books on CD and digital formats. Beginning in May 2022 and continuing until mid-2023, Blackstone commissioned audiobooks of the Johnny Dixon books, read by Johnny Heller.

Television

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="white-space:nowrap"

!# !!TV program title !!Book title !!Producer !!Year

|-

|style="text-align:center"|01||Once Upon a Midnight Scary||The House with a Clock in Its Walls||VideoGems||style="text-align:center"|1979

|-

|style="text-align:center"|02|| The Clue According to Sherlock Holmes||The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn||VideoGems||style="text-align:center"|1980

|-

|style="text-align:center"|03||The House with a Clock in Its Walls||The House with a Clock in Its Walls||Barr Films||style="text-align:center"|1991

|-

|style="text-align:center"|04||The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn||The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn||Barr Films||style="text-align:center"|1991

|}

See also

  • Lewis Barnavelt (series)
  • Johnny Dixon (series)
  • Anthony Monday (series)
  • List of horror fiction authors

References

  • Bellairsia | blog | forum – celebrating John Bellairs
  • John Bellairs Papers at the University of Minnesota Libraries