Abraham Merritt (1884–1943) was an American writer who, during his lifetime, was called the founding father of American fiction. Moreover, American readers of the 1930s generally considered him one of the best writers working in the field of mass literature! The creator of nightmares, the father of American fantasy, and the most influential science fiction author of the thirties are not three different people, but only one, Abraham Merritt. He was a professional journalist and devoted his entire life to this profession, going from a newspaper reporter at the Inquirer (Beverly, New Jersey) to the editor-in-chief of the American Weekly. The author’s creative legacy is not very large, however, during Merritt’s lifetime was so popular that a magazine published in the late 1940s, Abraham Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, was named after him. Merritt's works, usually written in the genre of fantasy about lost civilizations or mystical detective stories, were extremely popular and had a significant influence on many writers - including H. P. Lovecraft, Jack Williamson, Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague De Camp, Ray Bradbury and others. According to the English writer and literary critic Brian Stableford, the main thing in Merritt’s books is the power of imagination, inexhaustible fantasy, leading the reader to “the extreme limits of the unknown, where even Edgar Burroughs did not dare to look.” Contents: Doctor Lowell (cycle) Doctor Goodwin (cycle) Face in the Abyss (cycle) Seven Steps to Satan (novel) Inhabitants of the Mirage (novel) Stories (collection)