Ramsey Campbell Critical Essay | Critical Essay by T. E. D. Klein

Critical Essay by T. E. D. Klein

SOURCE: "Ramsey Campbell: An Appreciation," in Nyctalops, No. 13, 1977, pp. 19-25.

Klein is an American author of horror fiction whose works include the novel The Ceremonies (1984) and the novella collection Dark Gods (1985). In the following excerpt from an essay originally written in 1974, he examines the stories in Demons by Daylight and attests to the marked influence that the collection has had on the modern horror story.

This is the story of how a young man crawled out from under H. P. Lovecraft's shadow, saw the sun, and wrote Demons by Daylight . . .

Back in 1969, after Arkham House had exhausted its supply of Lovecraft fiction and had run through three volumes of miscellaneous "Lovecraftiana" (juvenile efforts, fragments, "Lovecraft as Mentor," "Lovecraft in Providence," "Lovecraft and the New England Megaliths," et al), it dipped still further into the barrel and came out with Tales of...
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