Clifford Ball

Clifford Nankivell Ball was an American fantasy and horror writer, born on January 24, 1908, and dead by January 1947. He is mainly remembered as one of the earliest writers to develop sword-and-sorcery fiction in the years after Robert E. Howard, writing in the pulp-magazine tradition under the name Clifford Ball.

His best-known work appeared in Weird Tales, where he published stories featuring exotic settings, supernatural danger, and hard-driven adventure. That mix of action and uncanny atmosphere gave his fiction a place in the early history of modern fantasy, even though he never became as widely known as some of his contemporaries.

Ball’s career was brief, but later readers and specialty presses have kept interest in his work alive through reprints and collections such as The Thief of Forthe and Other Stories. A clear portrait image was not readily available from the sources I could confirm, so no profile image is included here.