Cornell Woolrich is widely regarded as the finest writer of pure suspense fiction in the twentieth century. The author of numerous classic novels and short stories (many of which were turned into classic films) such as Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Waltz Into Darkness, and I Married a Dead Man.
Woolrich began his career in the 1920s writing mainstream novels that won him comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The bulk of his best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing serialized in pulp magazines or as paperback novels. Because he was prolific, he found it necessary to publish under multiple pseudonyms, including “William Irish” and “George Hopley” […] Woolrich lived a life as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters and died, alone, in a seedy Manhattan hotel room following the amputation of a gangrenous leg. Upon his death, he left a bequest of one million dollars to Columbia University, to fund a scholarship for young writers.
Books in order of publication:
| Cover Charge | (1926) | |
| Children of the Ritz | (1927) | |
| Times Square | (1929) | |
| A Young Man’s Heart | (1930) | |
| The Time of Her Life | (1931) | |
| Manhattan Love Song | (1932) | |
| The Bride Wore Black / Beware the Lady (As: William Irish) | (1940) | |
| The Black Curtain | (1941) | |
| Black Alibi | (1942) | |
| Phantom Lady (As: William Irish) | (1942) | |
| The Black Angel | (1943) | |
| And So to Death (As: William Irish) | (1943) | |
| Deadline at Dawn (As: William Irish) | (1944) | |
| Night Has a Thousand Eyes | (1945) | |
| The Black Path of Fear | (1946) | |
| Borrowed Crime (As: William Irish) | (1946) | |
| The Dancing Detective (As: William Irish) | (1946) | |
| Waltz Into Darkness | (1947) | |
| Rendezvous in Black | (1948) | |
| I Married a Dead Man (As: William Irish) | (1948) | |
| The Blue Ribbon (As: William Irish) | (1949) | |
| Fright | (1950) | |
| Savage Bride | (1950) | |
| You’ll Never See Me Again | (1951) | |
| Strangler’s Serenade (As: William Irish) | (1951) | |
| Marijuana | (1951) | |
| Bluebeard’s Seventh Wife (As: William Irish) | (1952) | |
| Hotel Room | (1958) | |
| Into the Night (With: Lawrence Block) | (1959) | |
| The Doom Stone | (1960) | |
| Irish Trophy (As: William Irish) | (1978) |
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