Stephen King

Personal life

Stephen King was born Stephen Pollock in 1947, in Maine. His father left the family when King was just two years old, leaving them in great financial difficulties.

King has revealed that his interest in horror fiction started when he was just a child, upon reading some of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories. At school King started to write his own stories, and even contributed to some fanzines with his early tales.

King married Tabitha Spruce, who was also a writer, in 1971. The two of them struggled financially, as King was only able to sell a limited number of stories, earning just enough to scrape by. King also developed an alcohol problem at this point.

The family’s financial struggles were mostly overcome thanks to the success of King’s debut novel Carrie (1973), but King’s drinking problems kept growing worse. Nevertheless, he continued to write novels and proceeded to produce many bestsellers.

King and his family moved around a lot in the following years, but eventually settled down in King’s home state, Maine. At that point, King and Tabitha had three children together. King became a teacher of creative writing at the University of Maine in 1977, but continued his very active writing career as well.  

In the 1980s King had a serious drinking problem, combined with addiction to a number of other drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. His family eventually grew so frustrated and worried that they staged an intervention and directly confronted King with the scale of his problem. He sought help, and managed to quit both drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s.

In 1999 King was involved in a serious car accident, when he was hit by a van while on a walk. He suffered many painful injuries and his writing slowed down drastically for a time. At one point he announced that he would stop writing complete...