Comprehensive information and links about Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell (born January 4, 1946 in LiverpoolRamsey Campbell is a British writer, who is considered by many literary critics to be one of the greatest masters of horror fiction.

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Overview

His early work was greatly influenced by the work of H. P. Lovecraft; his first collection, , is a volume of Cthulhu Mythos stories and was published by Arkham House in 1964. At the suggestion of August Derleth, he rewrote many of his earliest stories, which he had originally set in the Massachusetts locales of Arkham Dunwich and Innsmouth, and relocated them around the fictional city of Brichester, located near the River Severn, apparently upstream of Bristol and downstream of Gloucester.

With the groundbreaking collection (1973), Campbell set out to be as unlike Lovecraft as possible, although the book did include "The Franklyn Paragraphs", which effectively uses Lovecraft's documentary narrative technique without slipping into parody of his writing . Other tales, such as "The End of a Summer's Day" and the remarkable "Concussion", show the emergence of Campbell's mature, highly distinctive , characterised by an intense focus on an often insane or distorted consciousness, a rich use of metaphor to vivify inanimate objects, and disorienting shifts in the narrative structure. Campbell has published a number of other collections since; many of his best stories can be found in the 1993 collection (issued in a badly cut version in 1979 and in a revised edition in 1983), the story of a homophobic serial killer told largely from the killer's point of view. A more sympathetic serial murderer appears in the later novel (1991), which displays Campbell's gift for word play, and which the author has said is disturbing "because it doesn't stop being funny when you think it should". Other non-supernatural novels, such as (1995), use well-drawn characters and a highly charged thriller narrative to examine social problems such as the violence that often results from the deprivation and abuse of children.

Campbell's supernatural horror novels include (1983), in which the boundaries between dream and reality become blurred to spectacularly disorienting effect; and (1990), in which an alien ice-entity apparently seeks entry to the world through the mind of a children's writer. In its fusion of horror with awe, shows the influence of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen as well as Lovecraft. Also notable is the novella , a fantasy which seamlessly blends the horrific and the comic.

Campbell has also edited a number of anthologies, including by "Adrian Ross" (Arthur Reed Ropes).

He is married with two children, Tamsin and Matthew, and still lives on Merseyside. A lifelong enthusiast of film, he reviews films and DVDs weekly for BBC Radio Merseyside.

Critical Studies

There is an extensive critical analysis of Campbell's work in S. T. Joshi's book (Necronomicon Press 1994), which contains critical appreciations by various authors and a long interview with Campbell himself.

(Short Stories), Stoker Award of the Horror Writers of America, Best Collection; World Fantasy Award, Best Collection"The Ultimate Cthulhu Mythos Book List" - Listing of all mythos novels, anthologies, collections, comic books, and more.