Author · 1948–2009

Michael Cox

Michael Cox was a British writer (1948–2009). Born in Wellingborough.

Our catalogue lists 2 books by Michael Cox, mostly ghost story, horror and Victorian-set fiction. They span 1986 to 1991. The most-read is The Oxford book of English ghost stories (1986).

Books by Michael Cox

Biography

Michael Cox was born in Wellingborough in 1948, and grew up in Northamptonshire where his parents worked in the shoe industry. Bed-bound at three with a prolonged ear infection, he learnt to read. A key moment in Cox's life occured when, staying with his grandparents, he saw from a window that the neighbours were burying fine Victorian books – well bound, lavishly tooled – as they thought such things harboured disease. He and his grandparents saved them, and he was ever after absorbed in them, especially the Arabian Nights tales. Fiction became a passion, and from Wellingborough Grammar School he went to St Catharines College, Cambridge where an academic career looked likely until he was asked to perform a score alongside a friend's silent film. In classic fashion, a talent scout saw him and Cox was offered a contract. He released two albums on EMI under the name Matthew Ellis. In 1977 he had begun working for the Northamptonshire publisher Thorsons, noted for its health list. In 1979, Cox published *The Subversive Vegetarian* (published again in 1985 as *The New Vegetarian*). Cox was now a freelance copy editor, working with panache and drawing out writers' intentions without imposing himself. His employers included OUP, for whom he had also written an elegant, popular biography of M.R. James (1983). Cox's taste for Victorian fiction led to his joining OUP's reference division in 1989.

Authors like Michael Cox