His mother, Georgia Wood Pangborn, was a noted writer of ghost stories that appeared regularly in such popular mainstream periodicals as Scribner's Magazine, Harper's Monthly, Woman's Home Companion, and others.
As children, Edgar and his sister Mary carried on the tradition by writing an extensive series of fanciful, handwritten storybooks, often collaborating on these with each other and also their mother.
For the first 20 years of his writing career, which started when he was 21, Pangborn wrote what he referred to as "literary hackwork"[citation needed] for the pulp magazines.
The story of a race of tiny winged beings who come to Earth to help mankind, as told by a kindly biologist, it has been translated into six languages and reprinted more than twenty times.
"[3] From there Pangborn continued writing in science fiction and in other genres as well, including the historical novel Wilderness of Spring and the contemporary courtroom drama The Trial of Callista Blake.
This post-apocalyptic world eventually became the backdrop for most of Pangborn's short fiction and his last novel, The Company of Glory (though not the Hugo-nominated "Longtooth", nor the 1971 Nebula finalist "Mount Charity").
These manuscripts included original string quartets, sonatas, nocturnes, and other orchestral forms written by Pangborn during his music conservatory days.