Edward J. O'Brien

Edward J. O'Brien (1890-1941) was an American anthologist, editor, poet and translator. Born in Boston, he spent a year at Harvard and in 1915 began The Best Short Stories, the annual selection of American short fiction he edited until his death and which Martha Foley then carried on. He moved to Europe in 1919 and settled in England, where he also edited yearbooks of British short stories and wrote The Dance of the Machines (1929), on the American short story and industrial life, and Son of the Morning (1932), a portrait of Nietzsche. He was married to the English novelist Romer Wilson from 1923 until her death in 1932, and in his last years he was European story editor for MGM's British studios. His translation of Henri Barbusse's Hell appeared in 1918 as The Inferno, with an introduction of his own.