Campbell, Ramsey 1946- (John Ramsey Campbell, Montgomery Comfort, Carl Dreadstone, E.K. Leyton, Jay Ramsay, Errol Undercliffe)

PERSONAL:

Born January 4, 1946, in Liverpool, England; son of Alexander Ramsay and Nora Campbell; married Jenny Chandler (a teacher), January 1, 1971; children: Tamsin Joanne, Matthew Ramsey. Politics: "Leftist: But I become progressively more cynical about political generalizations!" Religion: Agnostic.

ADDRESSES:

Office—31 Penkett Rd., Wallasey, Merseyside CH45 7QF, England. Agent—The Pimlico Agency, Box 20447, Cherokee Station, New York, NY 10021. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, editor, and short-story writer. Inland Revenue, Liverpool, England, tax officer, 1962-66; Liverpool Public Libraries, Liverpool, England, library assistant, 1966-71, acting librarian in charge, 1971-73; writer, 1973—. Lecturer on films and horror fiction; film critic, BBC Radio Merseyside, 1969—.

MEMBER:

British Film Institute, Horror Writers of America, British Fantasy Society (lifetime president), Society of Fantastic Films (lifetime president).

AWARDS, HONORS:

British Fantasy Awards for best short story, 1978, for "In the Bag," for best novel, 1980, for The Parasite, 1985, for Incarnate, 1988, for The Hungry Moon, 1989, for The Influence, 1991, for Midnight Sun, and 1994, for The Long Lost, and for best anthology/collection, 1991, for Best New Horror (with Stephen Jones), 1999, for Ghosts and Grisly Things, 2002, for Ramsey Campbell, Probably: On Horror and Sundry Fantasies, and for best collection, 2003, for Told by the Dead; World Fantasy Award for best short fiction, 1978, for "The Chimney," and 1980, for "Macintosh Willy," for best anthology, 1991, for Best New Horror (with Stephen Jones), and for best collection, 1994, for Alone with the Horrors. Bram Stoker Award, Horror Writers Association, for best novel, 1989, for Ancient Images; for best collection, 1994, for Alone with the Horrors, and for nonfiction category, 2002, for Ramsey Campbell, Probably; Liverpool Daily Post & Echo Award for Literature, 1994; Premios Gigamesh, 1994, for Spanish translation of The Influence; Premio alla Carriera a Ramsey Campbell (Prize for the Career of Ramsey Campbell), Fantafestival, Rome, Italy, 1995; best novel citation, International Horror Guild, 1998, for The House on Nazareth Hill; Grand Master Award, World Horror Convention, 1999; Lifetime Achievement Award, Horror Writers Association, 1999; best nonfiction citation, International Horror Guild, 2002, for Ramsey Campbell, Probably; Living Legend Award, International Horror Guild, 2007.

WRITINGS:

The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, Arkham (Sauk City, WI), 1964.

Demons by Daylight, Arkham (Sauk City, WI), 1973.

The Height of the Scream, Arkham (Sauk City, WI), 1976.

The Doll Who Ate His Mother, Bobbs-Merrill (New York, NY), 1976, new edition, Headline Feature (London, England), 1993.

(Editor and contributor) Superhorror, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1976, published as The Far Reaches of Fear, Star Books (England), 1980.

(Under house pseudonym Carl Dreadstone) The Bride of Frankenstein, Berkley (New York, NY), 1977.

(Under house pseudonym Carl Dreadstone) The Wolfman; Dracula's Daughter, Berkley (New York, NY), 1977.

The Face That Must Die, abridged version, Star Books, 1979, complete version, Scream/Press 1983, Millipede Press2006.

The Parasite, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1980, published as To Wake the Dead, Millington (London, England), 1980.

(Editor and contributor) New Terrors, two volumes, Pan Books, 1980.

(Editor and contributor) New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham (Sauk City, WI), 1980.

Through the Walls (booklet), British Fantasy Society, 1981.

The Nameless, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1981, new edition, Warner (New York, NY), 1992.

Dark Companions, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1982.

(Editor and contributor) The Gruesome Book, Piccolo, 1982.

(As Jay Ramsay) Night of the Claw, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1983.

Incarnate, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1983, revised and expanded edition, Futura, 1990.

Watch the Birdie, R. Pardoe (Runcorn, Cheshire, England), 1984.

Obsession, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1985.

Omnibus of New Terrors, Pan (New York, NY), 1985.

Cold Print (short stories), Scream/Press (Santa Cruz, CA), 1985, 2nd revised edition, Headline (London, England), 1993.

The Hungry Moon, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Lisa Tuttle and Clive Barker) Night Visions 111, 1986.

Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and Death, 1986, Tor (New York, NY), 2002.

The Influence, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1987.

Dark Feasts: The World of Ramsey Campbell, Robinson (London, England), 1987.

Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, Tor (New York, NY), 1988.

Ancient Images, Scribner (New York, NY), 1989.

Midnight Sun, Tor (New York, NY), 1990.

Needing Ghosts, Time Warner Books UK 1990.

(Editor, with Stephen Jones) Best New Horror, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 1990.

The Count of Eleven, Tor (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor, with Stephen Jones) Best New Horror 2, Carol & Graf (New York, NY), 1991.

Waking Nightmares, Tor (New York, NY), 1991.

Uncanny Banquet, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor, with Stephen Jones) Best New Horror 3, Carol & Graf (New York, NY), 1992.

Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell, Arkham (Sauk City, WI), 1993.

(Editor, with Stephen Jones) Best New Horror 4, Carol & Graf (New York, NY), 1993.

Strange Things and Stranger Places, Tor (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor) Deathport, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1993.

The Long Lost, Tor (New York, NY), 1993.

Two Obscure Tales, Necronomicon Press, 1993.

The One Safe Place, Forge (New York, NY), 1995.

Far Away and Never: The Fantasy Tales of Ramsey Campbell, Necronomicaon Press (West Warwick, RI), 1996.

Nazareth Hill, Forge (New York, NY), 1996, published in England as The House on Nazareth Hill, 1996.

The Last Voice They Hear, Tor (New York, NY), 1998.

Ghosts and Grisly Things, Tor (New York, NY), 1998.

Silent Children, Forge (New York, NY), 2000.

Pact of the Fathers, Forge (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor and contributor) Meddling with Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James, British Library (Boston Spa, England), 2001.

Ramsey Campbell, Probably: On Horror and Sundry Fantasies (nonfiction), edited by S.T. Joshi, introduction by Douglas E. Winter, PS Publishing (Harrogate, England), 2002.

The Darkest Part of the Woods, PS Publishing (Harrogate, England), 2002.

Told by the Dead, PS Publishing (Harrogate, England), 2003.

(Editor, with Dennis Etchison and Jack Dann) Gathering the Bones: Original Stories from the Masters of Horror, Tor (New York, NY), 2003.

The Overnight, PS Publishing (Harrogate, England), 2004, Tor (New York, NY), 2005.

Secret Story, Tor (New York, NY), 2006.

The Grin of the Dark, PS Publishing (Harrogate, England), 2007.

Contributor to numerous anthologies, including the series The Year's Best Horror Stories, DAW Books, and Best New Horror, Carroll & Graf. Contributor of short stories to magazines and periodicals.

Author of the columns "Layouts," British Fantasy Society Bulletin, 1974-77, "Ramsey Campbell, Probably," All Hallows (journal of the Ghost Story Society), reprinted in Dead Reckonings, "Ramsey's Rambles," Video Watchdog, and "Ramsey's Rants," PRISM (publication of the British Fantasy Society).

Campbell's works have been translated into Italian, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish. A collection of his manuscripts is housed at the Liverpool Local History Library.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ramsey Campbell's horror stories are often set in contemporary Merseyside, England, and involve quite ordinary characters. His unsettling, dreamlike prose, however, transforms his work into very effective horror fiction. As Stephen King stated in Danse Macabre, Campbell "writes a cool, almost icy prose line, and his perspective on his native Liverpool is always a trifle offbeat, a trifle unsettling. In a Campbell novel or story, one seems to view the world through the thin and shifting perceptual haze of an LSD trip that is just ending … or just beginning." Gary William Crawford also found a druglike sensation in Campbell's prose. "Campbell remains most sensitive," Crawford wrote in Horror Literature, "to a culture obsessed with alienation, Dharma psychology, strange states of consciousness, and sexual and moral anarchy. He renders this world in some of the most effective prose of modern terror fiction…. Minute elements of the environment convey a potent, terrifying meaning; news headlines of mass murder, suicide, and rape, snatches of radio dialogue, and flashes of television images are pregnant with subversive meaning; statues, automobiles, neon signs collude as in a psychotic state; and the images that Campbell creates can be labeled quite simply those of paranoia." T.E.D. Klein also found Campbell's style unsettling. Campbell's world, Klein wrote in Nyctalops, is "a world in which anything can happen. Expect anything. Expect the worst. What this leads to, of course, is a kind of dreamlike paranoia that affects his characters' perceptions—not a new thing for horror stories, it's true, except that Campbell does it so much better."

Although he had long enjoyed horror literature—he claims that a horrific scene in Victorian children's book author George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin first drew his attention to the genre at the age of six—Campbell was not inspired to write fiction until reading the work of 1930s horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. His first collection of stories, in fact, is based on the Cthulhu mythos, a malignant pantheon of elder gods invented by Lovecraft for use in his fiction. Campbell borrowed the mythos from Lovecraft as well as the use of rural settings and characters, placing his early stories in the English countryside. Many of the stories he wrote at this time are collected in The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants. Though taking after Lovecraft, the works, according to a writer for the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, "are written with such verve and enthusiasm as to be superior to much work of their kind."

But as Campbell's writing matured, his style became less imitative of Lovecraft's work and more expressive of his own perceptions. "When I began to feel that the Cthulhu Mythos was growing too restrictive," he wrote in The Fantasy Reader's Guide to Ramsey Campbell, "too explicit as a structure, to function in the way Lovecraft wanted (as a means to imply the indescribable) … I decided to strike off into the unknown without Lovecraft's map." Campbell's independence was noted in such short stories as "The Cellars," "Cold Print," and "The Franklyn Paragraphs," all written between 1965 and 1967.

An important part of this development was that Campbell began writing stories set in his native Liverpool, and involving the real people who live there. This authenticity has been especially praised. Speaking of Demons by Daylight, which collects many of Campbell's first post-Lovecraftian tales, Klein wrote: "At last we have a collection of tales in which the hero is convincingly human, not a neurasthenic antiquarian or a gentleman of leisure or a mad scientist or an eccentric sculptor. We have instead a fellow who works in a boring office or library." According to a writer for St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, the collection "could be said to have almost single-handedly ushered in the modern age of horror fiction." Speaking of his work in an interview with Fantasy Macabre, Campbell stated: "I feel I've at least tried to be honest about the terrors I write about, particularly to be honest about their sources…. By contrast, my Lovecraftian tales … were a matter of involving myself with someone else's horrors, an attempt to pass on some of the imaginative appeal they had for me."

Elaborating further on this subject, Campbell once told CA: "Most of my terrors are rooted in modern life, contemporary psychology, often in cities. Some writers believe that horror fiction is a way of concealing oneself or one's feelings—they've said so—but I'm trying to be honest. I don't view my stories as escapism, exactly the opposite. I believe that horror fiction cannot be too frightening or too disturbing." Michele Slung in the Washington Post commented: "Campbell's two great strengths as a writer of horror fiction are his talent for not quite describing the monstrous forces and events that propel his plots and his ability to blast any of the reader's lurking complacency when he does go into detail."

His works after Demons by Daylight abandoned the feel of the Lovecraftian pantheon, except in his novel Midnight Sun, where a man tries to summon an ice creature who will most likely destroy the world. Instead, critics noted that Campbell's themes expanded to include love, sexuality, gender, and the interrelationship between dream and reality. This direction led him to such novels as the surreal Needing Ghosts, Incarnate, and The Face That Must Die, in which Campbell writes from the mind of a serial killer, leading readers to understand the twisted logic of the narrator. The Face That Must Die was also noted by critics as bringing to the fore Campbell's treatment of the horrors of the city.

During his long career, Campbell has proven his versatility, inspiring a Publishers Weekly writer to credit him as "the most protean of horror writers," one capable of producing "quiet terror in the classic tradition … eccentric horror that plays for laughs, [or] fiction that uses the genre as a staging ground for deft psychological and sociological commentary," such as his 1994 novel, The Long Lost. That story turns on a modern British couple's rescue of a dying old woman from a strange, deserted town in Wales. After welcoming her into their home, they begin to experience chaos in their neighborhood. The old woman seems to rejuvenate as a result of the mayhem around her, but the supernatural element of the story seems almost secondary to "the tracing of what happens when conscience gives way to license," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer of the novel.

Campbell does away with the supernatural altogether in The One Safe Place, described as "his grimmest novel yet," by a Publishers Weekly contributor. The book is a thriller that indicts the judicial system for failing to protect victims. The Travis family is targeted by criminal Phil Fancy and his family in an escalating series of events that culminates with the kidnapping of twelve-year-old Marshall Travis, who is drugged and tortured by Phil's son, Darren. The Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded: "Ultimately, Campbell persuades the reader that the loss of innocence that Darren embodies and that he inflicts upon Marshall is more horrifying than any supernatural menace."

Campbell enters the mind of a serial child killer in Silent Children, another suspenseful thriller, singled out as the author's "best in nearly a decade," in a Publishers Weekly evaluation. The story concerns Leslie Ames and her son Ian, who move into a house with a grisly past. When they rent a room to a writer of horror stories, they have no idea of the man's connection to the house's terrible history. "Campbell establishes his characters in sharp, precise slashes of chapters," said the Publishers Weekly reviewer, who found the book's climax "a tour-de-force of suspense."

Like Silent Children, Pact of the Fathers is in some ways a family drama: a daughter must face the betrayal of her father. Daniella Logan, a psychology student, investigates her father's death and the disappearance of some of his possessions, only to discover his involvement in a strange cult. Her new knowledge puts her in danger, and she flees to the Greek Islands, only to become imprisoned by a friend of her father's. Campbell "tantalizes the reader with irresistible hints of occult machinations," noted a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.

Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell is a career retrospective of Campbell's short fiction, covering thirty years of work by the horror master. The deeply atmospheric and understated stories "demonstrate the ways this sophisticated British writer inspires fear without resorting to blood and gore," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. The stories range from early work in the style of Lovecraft, including "The Room in the Castle," to newer stories such as "In the Bag" and "The End of the Line." In "Macintosh Willy," Campbell describes the subtle ways in which a dead vagrant haunts the boys who desecrated his corpse. "The Voice of the Sea" lets two men discover hints of a horrifying alternate dimension in the patterns of wind and sea-swept sand on the beach. A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that Campbell's "confident reliance on style and language rather than shock effects has produced masterworks of modern horror" that will "endure for generations to come."

Nazareth Hill revolves around the gruesome history and supernatural influence of an English apartment building with a storied and fearsome history. Teenager Amy Priestly lives at Nazareth Hill with her father, Oswald, but she feels a deep fear of the house. Soon, she finds out that the building has served numerous diverse purposes over the years, from monastery to mental hospital, from office building to prison and torture chamber for unfortunates caught up in witch hunts. Already rebellious and at odds with her strict father, Amy feels her relationship with him changing under the influence of Nazareth Hill's malignant force. Unidentified shapes in the darkness plague her as Oswald's personality shifts toward the tyrannical. Soon, father and daughter are caught up in an inescapable nightmare as they are forced to reenact some of the terrible events that occurred years earlier at Nazareth Hill. Library Journal reviewer John Noel called the book "an original, well-written, and often demanding novel." A Publishers Weekly writer concluded: "With consummate skill, Campbell gives this tale of the past's stranglehold upon the present the thick and suffocating texture of an inescapable nightmare."

The Darkest Part of the Woods also includes a family mystery, though it hearkens back to his earlier works, and the setting of the story is familiar to readers of his Lovecraftian fiction. American doctor Lennox Price had intended to study victims of the strange hallucinogens that grow in Goodmanswood, but when he and his family settled in the nearby community, he, too, fell to the power of the woods. In addition, his family succumbs to the strange and compelling force—all but his eldest daughter. The woods await her, however, and when she begins to explore the madness of her father, she discov- ers the ruins of a tower that once belonged to the magician Nathaniel Selcouth; but something older and more ominous lives there as well. Campbell "is at the top of his form here, infusing every scene and scrap of dialogue with a sense of inescapable menace," wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. A writer for Kirkus Reviews called the novel "Campbell's masterpiece," and praised the book as "magically fresh and memorable."

The Overnight has its origins in a short period of downturn in Campbell's fortunes, when the uncertainties of the publishing industry compelled him to take a job in a British bookstore for a short period of time. Protagonist Woody Blake, a manager for the international Texts bookstore, has a reputation for improving efficiency at the chain's branch outlets. His new assignment takes him to England, where he is in charge of opening a large new Texts store in the Fenny Meadows Retail Park in Northern England. The site is plagued by mist and dampness, but Blake persists in his work. Though Blake and his staff expend considerable effort to prepare the store for opening, things begin to go wrong. Problems are subtle at first, including misplaced books, book orders that disappear from the computers, and damage to books. Soon, however, the problems become more serious. An employee is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Another mysteriously loses the ability to read. Unusual creatures are seen prowling the aisles at night, and the whole store is constantly contaminated with mud. Corporate reality intrudes when the store's bosses arrive, and Blake and crew must all pitch in for an overnight cleaning and stocking session to prepare the store for a pre-Christmas inspection. With everyone gathered in one place, trapped by the night, the forces that have been gradually building in the store make their full and terrifying presence known. "The prolific Campbell excels in displaying the horror of the everyday," observed Jackie Cassada in a Library Journal review. A Kirkus Reviews contributor described the novel as "amusingly damp horror in a fog-bound British bookstore" and as an "appealing little fancy." Campbell's "rich and evocative prose serves, like the Fenny Meadows fog, to wrap scenes in a dense miasma of disturbing images and shadowy shapes," observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Dudley Smith, the main character of Secret Story, seems to be stereotypically nerdlike, ineffective with women, and overly dedicated to his mother, with whom he still lives. He works at the local employment center where he assists job seekers with finding new places to work. A conflict with a woman seeking work as a dancer causes him considerable stress. His situation gets worse when he realizes that his mother has discovered the secret cache of stories he wrote and left on his computer. She finds the stories—murder mysteries in which a man kills women in various sneaky and cowardly ways—to her liking, and without Dudley's knowledge, she submits one to a fiction contest sponsored by Mersey Mouth magazine. Dudley's story, about a murder on the subway, wins the contest. The magazine is eager to promote him as a local author, and editor Patricia Martingale begins checking into his background for a profile story. Dudley, however, has no desire to attract anyone's attention because the lurid tales he wrote are not fiction. They describe in detail a number of unsolved murders that were committed by Dudley himself, and which he later wrote up as short stories to provide his own amusement and remind himself of the thrills associated with the crimes. Soon, Dudley sets his sights on Patricia Martingale, intending that she will be the star of his next story—and his next victim. The novel is "exceptionally well-written and plotted on all levels," commented reviewer Rick Kleffel in a piece for Agony Column. "As ever, Campbell is a consummate prose writer. Every page presents sentences that cling to the mind. Though he usually writes novels of the supernatural and does so superbly well, the same ambiguous prose style that makes his paranormal thrillers so creepy works equally well in a totally psychological setting," Kleffel concluded. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the novel one of Campbell's "better nonsupernatural shockers."

The Grin of the Dark is an "excellent piece of inventive, chilling suspense" by Campbell, noted Booklist reviewer Carl Hays. When unemployed film critic Simon Lester is assigned to write a biography of obscure silent-film star Tubby Thackeray, he believes his luck is changing for the better. Thackeray, once considered on a level with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, will make an interesting subject for a book, and the payment for the project will certainly be useful. As Lester searches for material on Thackeray, however, he finds that the archives and historical records contain little information about the once-popular star. Seeing the dearth of information as an interesting angle on the story, Lester increases his efforts to find out why there would be so little available knowledge about Thackeray. Soon, he uncovers secrets about the actor's past and uncovers clues to his real identity, which points to the involvement of a dreadful and ancient evil force which may have been Thackeray himself. Hays concluded that the novel is "superlative entertainment, among Campbell's best efforts."

Critical evaluations of Campbell usually judge him to be one of the best horror writers of his generation. "Campbell is one of those rare writers whose every word is worth reading," wrote S.T. Joshi in Extrapolation. "Good horror writers are quite rare," Stephen King said in Danse Macabre, "and Campbell is better than just good." Jack Sullivan, writing in the Washington Post Book World, maintained that although Campbell is "still not as well known as he deserves to be, [he] is surely the most sophisticated stylist in modern horror." Klein simply declared: "I think Campbell reigns supreme in the field today."

Campbell's work in pushing the boundaries of the horror genre was a quest evident to him as early as his teens. It was then that he became convinced that "terror was far larger and more diverse than the genre specializing in it, though that isn't in any way to repudiate the latter," as he remarked in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers. "I'm for largeness and variety," he continued, "and that's why I continue to write in the field—because I haven't found the limits. It can encompass comedy and tragedy, it's capable of functioning as satire and social comment, it stretches from psychological terror to visionary horror, to which I should like to see more of a return. It can also be a lot of fun."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Ashley, Michael, editor, The Fantasy Reader's Guide to Ramsey Campbell, Cosmos, 1980.

Joshi, S.T., Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction, Liverpool University Press (Liverpool, England), 2001.

King, Stephen, Danse Macabre, Everest House (New York, NY), 1981.

St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 1980; September 1, 1992, Elliott Swanson, review of Best New Horror 3, p. 30; February 1, 1993, Ray Olson, review of Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell, p. 969; October 15, 1993, Elliott Swanson, review of Best New Horror 4, p. 417; June 1, 1998, David Pitt, review of The Last Voice They Hear, p. 1731; June 1, 2000, David Pitt, review of Silent Children, p. 1852; November 15, 2002, Kristine Huntley, review of Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and Death, p. 583; February 15, 2007, Carl Hays, review of The Grin of the Dark, p. 44.

Extrapolation, winter, 2003, S.T. Joshi, "Survey of Four Decades of Ramsey Campbell," p. 420.

Fantasy Macabre, April, 1981, interview with Ramsey Campbell.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1997, review of Nazareth Hill, p. 570; May 1, 1998, review of The Last Voice They Hear, p. 599; September 1, 2002, review of Scared Stiff, p. 1248; June 15, 2003, review of Gathering the Bones: Original Stories from the Masters of Horror, p. 821; March 1, 2005, review of The Overnight, p. 243.

Library Journal, February 15, 1982, James B. Hemesath, review of Dark Companions, p. 472; October 15, 1982, review of New Terrors, p. 2004; September 1, 1983, Keith W. McCoy, review of Incarnate, p. 1719; February 15, 1985, Eric W. Johnson, review of Obsession, p. 179; July 16, 1986, James B. Hemesath, review of The Hungry Moon, p. 105; February 1, 1988, Marylaine Block, review of The Influence, p. 75; May 15, 1989, A.M.B. Amantia, review of Ancient Images, p. 87; October 15, 1989, review of The Doll Who Ate His Mother, p. 45; June 1, 1992, Marylaine Block, review of The Count of Eleven, p. 172; October 15, 1994, Eric W. Johnson, review of The Long Lost, p. 86; July, 1996, Robert C. Moore, review of The One Safe Place, p. 154; May 15, 1997, John Noel, review of Nazareth Hill, p. 98; April 15, 2005, Jackie Cassada, review of The Overnight, p. 78.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May, 1986, Algis Budrys, review of The Face That Must Die, p. 46.

MBR Bookwatch, May, 2005, Harriet Klausner, review of The Overnight.

Necrofile, summer, 1998, review of The Last Voice They Hear, p. 1; spring, 1999, review of Ghosts and Grisly Things, p. 3.

New Statesman, April 3, 1987, Kim Newman, review of The Hungry Moon, p. 31; March 25, 1988, Kim Newman, reviews of The Influence, Cold Print, Night Visions, Cutting Edge, and Dark Feasts, p. 28.

New Statesman & Society, December 7, 1990, Elizabeth J. Young, review of Best New Horror, p. 35.

New York Times Book Review, November 21, 1976, review of The Doll Who Ate His Mother, p. 68.

Nyctalops, May, 1977, T.E.D. Klein, profile of Ramsey Campbell.

Publishers Weekly, August 26, 1983, Barbara A. Bannon, review of Incarnate, p. 369; October 28, 1983, review of The Face That Must Die, p. 59; July 6, 1984, review of The Nameless, p. 63; December 21, 1984, review of The Nameless, p. 86; February 8, 1985, review of Obsession, p. 67; May 3, 1985, review of Cold Print, p. 67; December 13, 1985, review of Obsession, p. 52; May 30, 1986, Sybil Steinberg, review of The Hungry Moon, p. 56; March 6, 1987, Sybil Steinberg, review of Scared Stiff, p. 105; January 15, 1988, Sybil Steinberg, review of The Influence, p. 77; April 28, 1989, Sybil Steinberg, review of Ancient Images, p. 66; October 19, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Best New Horror, p. 48; December 21, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Midnight Sun, p. 43; October 4, 1991, review of Best New Horror 2, p. 78; May 11, 1992, review of The Count of Eleven, p. 55; December 14, 1992, review of Alone with the Horrors, p. 40; May 3, 1993, review of Strange Things and Stranger Places, p. 294; August 16, 1993, review of Deathport, p. 98; October 18, 1993, review of Best New Horror 4, p. 64; September 12, 1994, review of The Long Lost, p. 84; July 1, 1996, review of The One Safe Place, p. 42; May 19, 1997, review of Nazareth Hill, p. 67; April 27, 1998, review of The Last Voice They Hear, p. 43; June 26, 2000, review of Silent Children, p. 55; September 25, 2000, review of Ghosts and Grisly Things, p. 92; September 9, 2002, review of Ramsey Campbell, Probably: On Horror and Sundry Fantasies, p. 47; November 4, 2002, review of Scared Stiff, p. 68; April 7, 2003, review of Told by the Dead, p. 50; May 31, 2004, review of Alone with the Horrors, p. 56; March 14, 2005, review of The Overnight, p. 50; May 22, 2006, review of Secret Story, p. 36.

Rapport, January, 1997, review of The One Safe Place, p. 20.

School Librarian, winter, 2001, review of Meddling with Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James, p. 220.

School Library Journal, October 1, 1992, review of Best New Horror 2, p. 155.

Voice of Youth Advocates, December 1, 1983, review of New Terrors, p. 265; October, 1985, review of Dark Companions, p. 283; April 1, 1990, review of The Parasite, p. 70; February, 1991, review of Ancient Images, p. 388; April 1, 1992, review of Waking Nightmares, p. 41; August, 1993, review of Alone with the Horrors, p. 160.

Washington Post, November 20, 1981, Michelle Slung, review of The Doll Who Ate His Mother, p. C9.

Washington Post Book World, August 23, 1981, review of New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, p. 6; April 25, 1982, review of Dark Companions, p. 9.

Wilson Library Bulletin, November 1, 1989, Gene LaFaille, review of Ancient Images, p. 98; March 1, 1994, Gene LaFaille, review of Alone with the Horrors, p. 102.

ONLINE

Agony Column,http://www.trashotron.com/agony/ (January 5, 2005), Rick Kleffel, review of The Overnight; (September 30, 2005), Rick Kleffel, review of Secret Story.

Infinity Plus,http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/ (August 5, 2007), David Matthew, review of Ramsey Campbell, Probably.

Ramsey Campbell Home Page,http://www.ramseycampbell.com (August 5, 2007).