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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859.  He trained as a doctor, which he turned into a successful practice.  His teacher, Dr.

The great anthology BOUND FOR EVIL: CURIOUS TALES OF BOOKS GONE BAD has been nominated for a prestigious Shirley Jackson Award.  All of the stories in this anthology are about books that fall on the dark side of the bookshelf.  My short story “The Collective of Blaque Reach” was published as a bonus chap book that some received when they bought BOUND FOR EVIL.  The book is a huge hardcover book that includes stories by M.R. James, H.P.

William Fryer Harvey was born in 1885, in Yorkshire, England to a well-to-do Quaker family.  He was educated at Balliol College Oxford and eventually obtained a medical degree.  After traveling abroad to recover from ill health, he published his first book of short stories entitled Midnight House (1910).  He served as a surgeon-lieutenant in World War I.  There he was awarded The Albert Medal for Gallantry for saving the life of an officer from a boiler room.

Who is your favorite writer alive or dead?  Some would have trouble answering this question, but for me it’s easy.  Ramsey Campbell would be my response.  Born in 1946 in Liverpool, England, he now resides in Merseyside.  He is one of the most accomplished and recognized writers of weird horror fiction alive.  Campbell published his first story in 1962 at age 17.  He has since published hundreds more stories, over twenty novels and has won more than a dozen awards.  He has edited numerous anthologies and writes movie reviews for the BBC.  Now I realize this is a vintage horror site and Campbell is a current writer, but I’m making an exception here.  In this article I am going to focus on the novels of his that I have read to date.  I intend to write a future article about his short stories.  Incidentally, his anthology Alone with the Horrors is the only collection I have ever read cover to cover.  If you come across a copy of this book, do yourself a favor and pick it up.  I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Algernon Blackwood was born in 1869 in Kent, England to a prosperous family.  He became interested in the occult at a young age, which would later become evident in his writing.  He rebelled against his family in his early twenties and moved to Canada and America to pursue various jobs.  Some of these jobs included being a dairy farmer, a hotel proprietor, an actor, and a reporter for The New York Sun, where he investigated numerous haunted houses.  He eventually returned to England where he wrote several collections of ghost stories and radio programs.  In 1947, he started telling ghost stories on BBC TV and was dubbed ‘The Ghost Man’.  He received a knighthood in 1949.  Blackwood’s classic tale “The Doll” (1946) was given the small screen treatment in an episode of the wonderful television anthology series ‘Rod Serling’s Night Gallery’.  This story of a cursed doll sent to a British Colonel in retribution for dark deeds he committed in India is one of the highlights of the series. Blackwood died in December of 1951.

Guy de Maupassant was born in France in 1850.  He was a student of French novelist Gustave Flaubert. De Maupassant left studying law to join in the army during The Franco-Prussian War.  He wrote a lot of short stories and has been widely regarded as one of the true masters of the form.  Some of his tales would fall into the category of horror or weird fiction.  He suffered from syphilis starting in his 20’s.  The years of dealing with it may have contributed to his attempting suicide by cutting his throat late in life.  After the attempt he was committed to an asylum, where he remained for 18 months until he died in 1893.  During that time he wrote a number of his supernatural tales.

Last year at this time I did an article about the old tradition of telling scary stories at Christmas time ( www.vintagehorror.com/node/25 ) This year I thought I’d feature a few others by various authors.  I hope you all have a great and festive Christmas this year.