His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth best crime writer of his day, behind Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler.

[2][3] As Eddie Duggan observes, "Woolrich enrolled at New York's Columbia University in 1921 where he spent a relatively undistinguished year until he was taken ill and was laid up for some weeks.

It was during this illness (a Rear Window–like confinement involving a gangrenous foot, according to one version of the story) that Woolrich started writing, producing Cover Charge, which was published in 1926.

[4] For example, "William Irish" was the byline in Dime Detective Magazine (February 1942) on his 1942 story "It Had to Be Murder", source of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window and itself based on H.G.

"[4] Woolrich lived there until his mother's death on October 6, 1957, which prompted his move to the slightly more upscale Hotel Franconia (20 West 72nd Street near Central Park).

In his 60s, with his eyesight failing, lonely, wracked by guilt over his homosexuality, tortured by self-doubt, alcoholic and a diabetic, Woolrich neglected himself to such a degree that he allowed a foot infection to become gangrenous which resulted, early in 1968, in the amputation of a leg.

In 2020 and 2021, Otto Penzler's "American Mystery Classics" series released new editions of Waltz into Darkness and The Bride Wore Black in both hardcover and paperback.