Norman Matson

Norman Matson was an American novelist working in fantasy and light science fiction, born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, best known for completing The Passionate Witch (1941) after the sudden death of its original author, Thorne Smith. His continuation captured Smith's wry, melancholy comic voice closely enough that the novel became the basis for the 1942 film I Married a Witch and, indirectly, the television series Bewitched. Matson followed it with a sequel, Bats in the Belfry (1943). His own earlier fiction included Flecker's Magic (1926), a fantasy built around a witch character, and Doctor Fogg (1929), about an inventor whose homemade radio receiver picks up transmissions from other worlds, technology so unsettling that he ultimately destroys it. Matson's career blended comic fantasy with an interest in the unexplained, leaving behind a small but distinctive body of work overshadowed by its connection to Smith's more famous creation.