Richard Matheson was a famous American author known for his stories in fantasy, horror, and science fiction. This B1-level reading task introduces his life and work through a simplified text, suitable for intermediate English learners like your ESL students.

​

Richard Burton Matheson was born on February 20, 1926, in Allendale, New Jersey, to Norwegian immigrant parents. His parents divorced when he was eight, and he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, with his mother. As a child, Matheson loved movies like Dracula and started writing early—he published his first short story at age eight in a local newspaper. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School and later served in the U.S. Army during World War II in Europe.

​

After the war, he studied journalism at the University of Missouri and moved to California.

Matheson's writing career began in the 1950s. His first big success was the short story "Born of Man and Woman" in 1950, about a strange child locked in a basement. His most famous novel, I Am Legend (1954), is a science fiction horror story about the last man on Earth fighting vampires. It was made into movies three times: The Last Man on Earth (1964) with Vincent Price, The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend (2007) with Will Smith. Matheson wrote the screenplay for the first film. He also wrote other novels like The Shrinking Man (1956) and Hell House (1971), many of which became films.

​

In television, Matheson was a key writer for The Twilight Zone, creating 16 episodes, including the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with a gremlin on a plane wing, and "Little Girl Lost." His short story "Duel" (1971) was directed by Steven Spielberg as a TV movie about a driver chased by a truck. He worked with director Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations like House of Usher (1960) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1961). Matheson also wrote Western stories and novels in the 1990s.

​

Matheson married Ruth Ann Woodson in 1952, and they had four children, three of whom became writers. He won many awards, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984 and induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010. Matheson died on June 23, 2013, at age 87 in Calabasas, California. Writers like Stephen King and directors like Steven Spielberg called him a huge influence on horror and sci-fi.

​