Lovecraft's style of writing, though Maturin never claimed to be Lovecraft's equal. He was greatly influenced by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, and other authors such as Robert E. Howard and H.
G. Wells. Basil W.
Maturin was born in Fairfield County, Virginia to Frank Edwin Maturin and Mary Ann Henderson Maturin. He had three younger siblings: Henry Milton Maturin (1862–1900), Grace Eveline "Gussie" Maturin (b 1888), and a sister who died in infancy. His father died in 1900 when Basil was only 21 years old, and he began his career as a writer in 1893 after graduating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg.
His first novel was published in 1897 under the pseudonym 'Basil Wetherald', with two works appearing under this pseudonym in early 1898 before he started publishing several books under his own name over the next five years. In 1899 he married his wife Anna Margaret McLaughlin, with whom he had one child, a girl named Frances Margaret "Franny". In 1911 Basil & Anna moved from Lynchburg to Richmond with their son Francis II "Frank" but in 1915 they returned to Lynchburg with their daughter Frances Margaret "Franny".
In 1915 Basil published his most famous novel, The House of the Worm which introduced his most famous character 'Ligeia' who inspired a number of later stories including "Ligeia", "The Snow-Image" and "The Half-Alive Streets" which were originally published between 1926–1927 in Weird Tales magazine where many of his short stories were eventually collected by August Derleth in the 1930s until 1951 when they were finally collected together in The Collected Stories of Basil Wetherald where they remain today (Derleth chose not to collect these stories more than once). In 1922 Maturin published his second novel titled The Pit and the Pendulum which sold very well for its time and won him considerable popularity by 1923 when it was adapted into a silent film that starred Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr (later re-released on DVD). He continued writing more such novels such as The Facts About Beacon Hill (1926) and The Black God's Kiss (
