Green Thoughts

John Henry Noyes Collier (1901–1980) was a British-born author and screenplay writer best known for his short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1950s. They were collected in a 1951 volume, Fancies and Goodnights, which is still in print. Individual stories are frequently anthologized in fantasy collections. John Collier's writing has been praised by authors such as Anthony Burgess, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon and Paul Theroux. He was married to early silent film actress Shirley Palmer. His second marriage in 1942 was to New York actress Beth Kay (Margaret Elizabeth Eke). They divorced a decade later. He had one child, a son, from his third marriage.