SOURCE: "The Lovecraftian Tales" and "The Tales of Illusion," in Ramsey Campbell Starmont House, Inc., 1988, pp. 11-15, 16-25.

A short story writer, poet, and critic, Crawford is also the editor of Gothic, a journal of Gothic literature studies. He has published essays on such Gothic writers as Robert Aickman, J. S. Le Fanu, Walter de la Mare, and Oliver Onions, and contributed to Horror Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide (1981). In the following excerpt, Crawford surveys Campbell's short fiction.

As Campbell remarks in his introduction to Cold Print, . . . his collection of Lovecraftian stories, "The first book of Lovecraft's I read made me into a writer." One could argue that the influence of Lovecraft on Campbell never wore off, for, as in his novel The Nameless, the idea of a world dominated by an occult race of beings has never quite faded from his consciousness. However, T. E...