Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961-1991 [Hardcover]

Ramsey Campbell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

Ramsey Campbell is perhaps the world's most decorated author of horror fiction. He has won four World Fantasy Awards, ten British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, and the Horror Writers' Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Three decades into his career, Campbell paused to review his body of short fiction and selected the stories that were, to his mind, the very best of his works. Alone With the Horrors collects nearly forty tales from the first thirty years of Campbell's writing. Included here are "In the Bag," which won the British Fantasy Award, and two World Fantasy Award-winning stories, "The Chimney" and the classic "Mackintosh Willy."

Campbell crowns the book with a length preface which traces his early publication history, discusses his youthful correspondence with August Derleth, illuminates the influence of H.P. Lovecraft on his early work, and gives an account of the creation of each story and the author's personal assessment of the works' flaws and virtues.

In its first publication, a decade ago, Alone With the Horrors won both the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. For this new edition, Campbell has added one of his very first published stories, a Lovecraftian classic, "The Tower from Yuggoth." From this early, Cthulhian tale, to later works that showcase Campbell's growing mastery of mood and character, Alone With the Horrors provides readers with a close look at a powerful writer's development of his craft.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Stephen King on Ramsey Campbell: "He is literate in a field that has attracted too many comic book intellects, cool in a field that tends toward panting melodrama by virtue of its subject matter, fluid in a field where many of the best practitioners fall prey to cant." You can't find a better introduction to Campbell's work than this attractive collection of 39 tales spanning 30 years, with photomontage illustrations by the award-winning J. K. Potter. Modern paranoia and identity confusion, wasted urban landscapes, surreal transitions between inner fears and real-life horrors--all in a terrifyingly enigmatic style. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Campbell (Told by the Dead) won a World Fantasy Award for this career retrospective, first published in 1993 with slightly different contents, and its 37 stories—three of which themselves won World Fantasy and British Fantasy awards—represent some of the best short horror fiction written in the past half century. In "Mackintosh Willy," a dead derelict haunts the boys who desecrated his corpse, leaving only tatters of filthy clothes and graffiti scrawls as signs of his pursuit. "The Voice of the Sea" features two emotionally troubled men who see in the seemingly random patterns of sand disturbed by wind and waves the blueprint for a malignant alternate dimension. Though the basic themes of Campbell's tales are common, his approach to them is not, and is best summed up by the character in one who says, "I was eager to let my imagination flourish, for it was better than reading a ghost story." Each tale is a precision-crafted piece in which Campbell creates horror from menacing ripples in the surface of the ordinary, compelling readers to fill in what is not shown with their own worst imaginings. His confident reliance on style and language rather than shock effects has produced masterworks of modern horror certain to endure for generations to come.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765307677
• ISBN-13: 978-0765307675
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #740,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astounding, May 7, 2000

By 

"madamebovary" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961-1991 (Hardcover)

I agree with Miss Jamesons report. I too was feeling disillusioned with the formulaic and frankly dull horror novels available in the stores (obviously not including Straub and King who i had read many years ago). I chanced upon this book, and having read the praise on the jacket took a risk on an author i had not heard of.

This book is extremely well written and makes a worthy contender as a modern day M R James. The stories are both subtle yet grotesque and shadowy. I cannot think of a bad story in the collection (a problem which many of Kings anthologies suffer from). The stories do not only deal with horror but themes of lonliness and urban despair. Also the english town settings add a feeling of odd normalcy against which the suggested horrors are sharply contrasted. I highly recommend this collection (which incidentally is terrific value) and urge fans of cerebral horror to seek it out.

Personal Highlights include 'The Man in the Underpass', 'Mackintosh Willy' and 'Out of Print.'

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is an essential short horror collection, May 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961-1991 (Hardcover)

Among horror authors writing short fiction, I consider only Ramsey Campbell and Thomas Ligotti to be of importance in today's field. This book, which is a sort of career retrospective of Campbell's work, is an absolutely essential book for any fan of intellegent and moody horror. Campbell's style is at once clautrophobic and incredibly original. He is a master at creating uneasy, tense set-pieces, and even better at creating views of our world that are slanted in an undefinable yet vaguely grotesque manner. Campbell is subtle where other authors such as King are blatant and obvious; but this subtlety masks a cold calculation that is as eerily effective as anything I've ever read. Campbell is one of the few authors around today who is writing vital, important short horror, and this book displays his intense genius. An added plus are the atmospheric and intriguing illustrations by J. K. Potter

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!!!!!!!!, October 27, 1999

By 

Honey Jameson ([e-mail]) (uk) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961-1991 (Hardcover)

This book was like having all my Christmases come at once! My brother bought it for my birthday when i was feeling disillusioned with the horror genre. i had read loads of books by Kootnz, Laymon etc (obviously i read King and the classics ages ago!) and was hoping that if i got through enough of their books i might find one actually scary and worth reading. And then i dipped into this book. The value for money is unbelievable, for the small price of 5.99 you get almost every short story Campbell has written and whats more they are very scary. Favourites include The Hands, Hearing Is Believing...., there are too many to mention. His stories are eerie often in an ambiguous, odd way which heightens the fear. I cannot praise this book enough, it surpasses King's 'Nightshift' in both quantity and quality. It is a must-have for any horror fan.