Content Warning: This section contains references to addiction and child death.

American author Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. King’s childhood was filled with both enjoyable and challenging experiences. His father, Donald King, abandoned the family when Stephen was very young, leaving his mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King, to raise him and his adopted older brother, David. King’s mother instilled a love of reading and storytelling in the boys at an early age, telling them stories at bedtime and encouraging them to read for themselves. A less positive formative experience was the death of one of King’s friends, who was struck by a train. According to later interviews and reports, King has no recollection of the event despite witnessing it firsthand; however, many theorize that this traumatic event influenced some of his darker works. Childhood trauma and the deaths of children feature regularly in his writing; “The Monkey,” for example, describes the deaths of two children (one in a vehicular accident).

King’s interest in horror was allegedly sparked when he stumbled upon a collection of horror and science fiction stories by H. P. Lovecraft that had belonged to his father. King credits Lovecraft with starting his writing career (King, Stephen.