Jacobs, W. W: A Master Of Craft. v1. 7 Apr 2013
 

William Wymark Jacobs (8 September 1863 – 1 September 1943), an English author of short stories and novels. Although much of his work was humorous, he is most famous for his horror story The Monkey's Paw.

Excerpt
A pretty girl stood alone on the jetty of an old-fashioned wharf at Wapping, looking down upon the silent deck of a schooner below. No smoke issued from the soot-stained cowl of the galley, and the fore-scuttle and the companion were both inhospitably closed. The quiet of evening was over everything, broken only by the whirr of the paddles of a passenger steamer as it passed carefully up the centre of the river, or the plash of a lighterman's huge sweep as he piloted his unwieldy craft down on the last remnant of the ebb-tide. In shore, various craft sat lightly on the soft Thames mud: some sheeting a rigid uprightness, others with their decks at various angles of discomfort.