Charles G. Finney
Charles Grandison Finney (December 1, 1905 – April 16, 1984) was an American news editor and fantasy novelist, the great-grandson of evangelist Charles Grandison Finney. His first novel and most famous work, The Circus of Dr. Lao, won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1935.
Also recorded as Charles Grandison Finney
Charles G. Finney
- Name
- Charles G.
- Birth Name
- Charles Grandison Finney
- Born
- 1 December 1905
- Birthplace
- Sedalia, Missouri, U.S.
- Died
- 16 April 1984
- Place of death
- Pima, Arizona, U.S.
- Occupation
- Writer
- Nationality
- United States
- Honours
- National Book Award
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Charles G. Finney. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q4894197 · wikipedia · Charles G. Finney
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
The documentary record
Statements marked “Documentary record” are set in the article beside the passage they confirm. Each is read from the authority records of the institutions named here; select “Prove” to see the record it was read from, where in that record, and when.
Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Complete reading chain (JSON)In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Charles G. Finney • Birth Name — Charles Grandison Finney • Born — 1 December 1905 • Birthplace — Sedalia, Missouri, U.S. • Died — 16 April 1984 • Place of death — Pima, Arizona, U.S. • Occupation — Writer • Genre — Fantasy
Documentary record
Charles G. Finney, a “Fantasyautor”, was born in 1905 and died in 1984. Both events are recorded by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Biography
Biography
Finney was born in Sedalia, Missouri, and served in Tientsin, China, with the U.S. Army 15th Infantry Regiment (E Company) from 1927 to 1929. In his memoirs, he notes that The Circus of Dr. Lao was conceived in Tientsin during 1929. After the Army, he moved to Tucson, Arizona. He worked as an editor for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona from 1930 to 1970. Some of Finney's papers, with correspondence and photographs, are collected at the University of Arizona Main Library Special Collections, Collection Number: AZ 024, Papers of Charles G. Finney, 1959-1966. The archive includes typed manuscripts of "A Sermon at Casa Grande", "Isabelle the Inscrutable", "Murder with Feathers", "The Night Crawler", "Private Prince", "An Anabasis in Minor Key", "The Old China Hands", and "The Ghosts of Manacle".
Short stories
Short stories
• "The Iowan's Curse", Harper's Magazine, July 1958 • "The Life and Death of a Western Gladiator", Harper's Magazine, October 1958 • "The Gilashrikes", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1959 • "The Night Crawler", The New Yorker, December 5, 1959 • "An Anabasis in Minor Key", The New Yorker, March 26, 1960 • "Private Prince", The New Yorker, June 24, 1961 • "A Sermon at Casa Grande", Point West, September 1963 • "Isabelle the Inscrutable", Harper's Magazine, 228:1367 (April 1964) pp. 51–58 • "Murder with Feathers", Harper's Magazine 232:1391 (April 1966) pp. 112–13
Play
Play
• Project Number Six (1962)
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1905
Charles G. Finney born at Sedalia.
1984
Charles G. Finney died at Pima.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Sedalia.
Birth place
Pima.
Death place
Books
• The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935) • The Unholy City (1937) • Past the End of the Pavement (1939), collection • The Ghosts of Manacle (1964), collection • The Old China Hands (1961), memoir of service with the Army 15th Infantry in Tientsin, China • The Magician Out of Manchuria (1968)
Influence
Finney's work, especially The Circus of Dr. Lao, has been influential on subsequent writers of fantasy. Ray Bradbury admired the novel and anthologized it in The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories; Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes shares with Dr. Lao the setting of a supernatural circus. Arthur Calder-Marshall's The Fair to Middling (1959), Tom Reamy's Blind Voices (1978), Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn (1968) and Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City (2009) were all influenced by Finney's work. It was adapted to film as 7 Faces of Dr. Lao.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Charles G. Finney, revision 1371373634 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Charles Grandison Finney. www.librarything.com.
- 2."Books and Authors". The New York Times. April 12, 1936 (p. BR12).
- 3."Lewis is Scornful of Radio Culture: ...". The New York Times. May 12, 1936 (p. 25).
- 4.Charles Finney. The Old China Hands. Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961 (p. 59).
- 5.Prize-winning novelist and newspaperman Charles G. Finney, author of. - UPI Archives. UPI.
- 6.Star, David Carter Special to the Arizona Daily. Charles Finney and The Circus of Dr. Lao. Arizona Daily Star. 2020-10-13.
- 7.UPI obituary. The New York Times. April 19, 1984.
- 8."Finney, Charles G." in Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. Scarecrow Press, 2005 (p. 150).
- 9.Cathy Dunn MacRae. Presenting Young Adult Fantasy Fiction. Twayne Publishers, 1998 (p. 324).
- 10.Jeffrey Renaud. "Lethem Exits the Unknown with Omega". Comic Book Resources. July 18, 2008. Retrieved June 21, 2010.
- 11."Charles G. (Charles Grandison) Finney". Harper's Magazine (harpers.org).
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
- "Charles G. Finney" in Contemporary Authors, published by Thomson Gale
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
People, houses and institutions
Knowledge graph
People, houses and institutions
Teachers, collaborators, publishers and institutions recorded against this person, each on a stated basis.
Born at
1- SedaliaPlace
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
Open the remaining particulars
Finney is recorded as having received National Book Award. The identifiers under which Charles G. Finney may be traced in institutional catalogues.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 21 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Charles François de Cisternay du FayAuthor
- Charles FrazierAuthor
- Charles Frederick BriggsAuthor
- Charles FullerAuthor
- Charles Gavan DuffyAuthor
- Charles GayarréAuthor
- Charles George HerbermannAuthor
- Charles Godfrey LelandAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Charles G. Finney?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.