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Famous Like Me > Writer > C > Ramsey Campbell

Profile of Ramsey Campbell on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Ramsey Campbell  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 6th January 1946
   
Place of Birth: Liverpool, England, UK
   
Profession: Writer
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

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

Overview

His early work was greatly influenced by the work of H. P. Lovecraft; his first collection, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, 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 Demons by Daylight (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 style. Other tales, such as "The End of a Summer's Day" and the remarkable "Concussion", show the emergence of Campbell's mature, highly distinctive style, 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 several collections since; many of his best stories can be found in the 1993 collection Alone with the Horrors.

Campbell has written many novels, both supernatural and non-supernatural. They include The Face That Must Die (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 The Count of Eleven (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 The One Safe Place (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 Incarnate (1983), in which the boundaries between dream and reality become blurred to spectacularly disorienting effect; and Midnight Sun (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, Midnight Sun shows the influence of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen as well as Lovecraft. Also notable is the novella Needing Ghosts, a fantasy which seamlessly blends the horrific and the comic.

Campbell has also edited a number of anthologies, including New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1980), New Terrors (1980) and (with Stephen Jones) the first five volumes of the annual Best New Horror series (1990-1994). His 1992 anthology Uncanny Banquet was notable for reprinting the obscure but brilliant 1914 horror novel The Hole of the Pit by "Adrian Ross" (Arthur Reed Ropes).

He still lives in Merseyside.

Bibliography

Novels

  • The Doll That Ate His Mother, 1976. Revised text: 1985.
  • The Bride of Frankenstein (written as Carl Dreadstone), 1977.
  • Dracula's Daughter (written as Carl Dreadstone), 1977.
  • The Wolfman (written as Carl Dreadstone), 1977.
  • The Face That Must Die, 1979. Restored text: 1983.
  • The Parasite (AKA To Wake The Dead), 1980.
  • The Nameless, 1981.
  • The Claw (AKA Night of the Claw) (written as Jay Ramsay), 1983.
  • Incarnate, 1983.
  • Obsession, 1985.
  • The Hungry Moon, 1986.
  • The Influence, 1988.
  • Ancient Images, 1989.
  • Midnight Sun, 1990.
  • Needing Ghosts, 1990.
  • The Count of Eleven, 1991.
  • The Long Lost, 1993.
  • The One Safe Place, 1995.
  • The House on Nazareth Hill (AKA: Nazareth Hill), 1996.
  • The Last Voice They Hear, 1998.
  • Silent Children, 2000.
  • Pact of the Fathers, 2001.
  • The Darkest Part of the Woods, 2003.
  • The Overnight, 2004.
  • Secret Stories, 2005.

Collections

  • The Inhabitant of the Lake And Less Welcome Tenants, 1964.
  • Demons By Daylight, 1973.
  • The Height of the Scream 1976.
  • Waking Nightmares 1981.
  • Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and Death, 1986.
  • Night Visions: The Hellbound Heart (Stories by Campbell, Clive Barker and Lisa Tuttle), 1986.
  • Dark Feasts: The World of Ramsey Campbell, 1987.
  • Waking Nightmares, 1991.
  • Cold Print, 1993. (Contains the stories from The Inhabitant of the Lake as well as later material in the Lovecraft vein.)
  • Alone with the Horrors, 1993.
  • Strange Things and Stranger Places, 1993.
  • Ghosts and Grisly Things, 1998.
  • Told By The Dead, 2003.

As Editor

  • Superhorror (AKA The Far Reaches of Fear), 1976.
  • New Terrors (Published in US as two separate volumes, New Terrors 1 and New Terrors 2), 1980.
  • New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, 1980
  • The Gruesome Book, 1983
  • Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, 1988.
  • Best New Horror (with Stephen Jones), 1990.
  • Best New Horror 2 (with Stephen Jones), 1991.
  • Best New Horror 3 (with Stephen Jones), 1992.
  • Uncanny Banquet, 1992
  • Best New Horror 4 (with Stephen Jones), 1993.
  • Deathport, 1993.
  • Best New Horror 5 (with Stephen Jones), 1994.
  • Meddling With Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James, 2002.
  • Gathering The Bones (with Jack Dann and Dennis Etchison), 2003.


There is an extensive critical analysis of Campbell's work in S. T. Joshi's book The Modern Weird Tale (2001). Joshi has also written a book-length study, Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction (2001).

Select Literary Awards

  • 1978 "The Chimney", World Fantasy Award, Best Short Story
  • 1978 "In The Bag", British Fantasy Award, Best Short Story
  • 1980 The Parasite, British Fantasy Award, Best Novel
  • 1980 "Mackintosh Willy", World Fantasy Award, Best Short Story
  • 1985 Incarnate, British Fantasy Award, Best Novel
  • 1988 The Hungry Moon, British Fantasy Award, Best Novel
  • 1989 The Influence, British Fantasy Award, Best Novel
  • 1989 Ancient Images, Bram Stoker Award, Best Novel
  • 1991 Midnight Sun, British Fantasy Award, Best Novel
  • 1994 Alone With The Horrors (Short Stories), Stoker Award of the Horror Writers of America, Best Collection; World Fantasy Award, Best Collection
  • 1994 The Long Lost, British Fantasy Award, Best Novel
  • 1998 The House on Nazareth Hill, International Horror Guild, Best Novel
  • 1999 Ghost and Grisly Things (Short Stories), British Fantasy Award, Best Collection
  • 2003 Told by the Dead (Short Stories), British Fantasy Award, Best Collection

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Ramsey Campbell