My Ramsey Campbell Itinerary (thus far)

#HBD Ramsey Campbell (b. 1946) 🎂

[....] literature itself could be defined as the discourse of the uncanny: literature is the kind of writing that most persistently and most provocatively engages with the uncanny aspects of experience, thought and feeling. In some ways this is in keeping with the sort of conception of literature theorized by the Russian formalists of the early twentieth century, especially Viktor Shklovsky. Literature, for the Russian formalists, has to do with defamiliarization (ostranenie): it makes the familiar strange, it challenges our beliefs and assumptions about the world and about the nature of 'reality'.

From: An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory by Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle (2016)

Links to some of my reviews starting 2017:

Reading Ramsey Campbell: 1981

Reading Ramsey Campbell: 1982

3 stories: Reading Ramsey Campbell

...streets of small houses and shops that looked dusty as furniture shoved out of sight in an attic. They were deserted except for a man in an ankle-length overcoat, who limped by like a sack with a head.

"The Depths" by Ramsey Campbell [1982]

The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell (2004)

The Pretence by Ramsey Campbell (2013)

Ramsey Campbell's 1987 Top Ten Lists

Reading: A Primer to Ramsey Campbell (2021)

....I've never faltered in my conviction that horror is a branch of literature, however much of it lets that tradition down. I started writing horror in an attempt to pay back some of the pleasure the field has given me, and I haven't by any means finished. I don't expect to choose to, ever.

The Kind Folk by Ramsey Campbell (2012)

Reading Ramsey Campbell: "Lost for Words"

Creatures of the Pool by Ramsey Campbell (2009)

A note on “The Tugging” by Ramsey Campbell

"The Place of Revelation" by Ramsey Campbell (2003).

Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach by Ramsey Campbell

Books or life: The Booking by Ramsey Campbell (2015)

Reviewing: The Seven Days of Cain by Ramsey Campbell (2010)

Why Leave? The Last Revelation of Gla'aki by Ramsey Campbell

‘I regard writing not as an investigation of character, but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me.’

Evelyn Waugh

Better Out Than In: Think Yourself Lucky by Ramsey Campbell [2014]

Feast of Fools: The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell (2007)

A forest as large as the dark: Midnight Sun by Ramsey Campbell (1990)

Some buried wizard: The Doll Who Ate His Mother By Ramsey Campbell (1976)

Once the forest gets in: The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell (2003)

"The Fourth Call” by Ramsey Campbell. 

Horror Delve’s Matt Cowan has his own Ramsey Campbell story and novel reviews, as well as an interview with Campbell. They can be found here.

Jay

4 January 2023