The Doll Who Ate His Mother
The book where British horror's modern voice — municipal, paranoid, precisely seedy — first sounded at novel length; the foundation of Campbell's six-decade dominance of the field's literary wing.
Book Entry · Horror
What is Conjure Wife about?
Sociology professor Norman Saylor, debunker of superstition, discovers his wife Tansy practises protective magic — and makes her burn every charm in the house. His career, luck and life immediately begin to fail, because every faculty wife on campus is a witch, the spells are real, and Tansy was his only armour in a war he never knew was being fought. Leiber plays the premise with perfect deadpan logic, turning academic politics into occult siege warfare. First serialised in Unknown in 1943; the campus has dated, the paranoia hasn't.
Why it matters
The foundational modern-witchcraft novel, filmed three times (best as Night of the Eagle / Burn, Witch, Burn) and the clear ancestor of suburban-occult fiction from Ira Levin onward.
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