Richard Barham Middleton was an English poet and author, who is remembered mostly for his short ghost stories, in particular The Ghost Ship. Middleton suffered from severe depression, known as melancholia at that time. He spent the last nine months of his life in Brussels, where in December 1911 he took his life by poisoning himself with chloroform, which had been prescribed as a remedy for his condition. His literary reputation was maintained by Edgar Jepson and Arthur Machen, of whom the latter wrote an introduction to Middleton’s collection The Ghost Ship and Other Stories, and later by John Gawsworth. His stories appeared in several anthologies. An encounter by Middleton with the young Raymond Chandler is said to have influenced the latter to postpone his career as writer. Chandler wrote, ‚Middleton struck me as having far more talent than I was ever likely to possess; and if he couldn’t make a go of it, it wasn’t very likely that I could.‘