''Demons by Daylight'' is a collection of stories by English author
Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell (born 4 January 1946) is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awa ...
. Released in
1973
Events January
* January 1 – The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark 1973 enlargement of the European Communities, enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union.
* January 14 - The 16-0 19 ...
, it was the author's second short story collection, after ''
The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants
''The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants'' is a collection of Fantasy fiction, fantasy and Horror fiction, horror short stories by British author Ramsey Campbell, J. Ramsey Campbell, who dropped the initial from his name in subseque ...
''. Like the earlier book, it was published by
Arkham House
Arkham House was an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's best works, which had ...
.
Campbell had completed work on the stories for it by 1968, and it was scheduled for publication in 1971; however, due to the 1971 death of editor and Arkham House co-founder
August Derleth
August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. He was the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. He made contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the Lovecraftian horror, cosmi ...
, the collection was delayed a further two years; it finally saw print in 1973. It was published in an edition totaling 3,472 copies and with dust jacket art by Eddie Jones, commissioned by Campbell.
A variant edition was published by Jove/HBJ in May 1979. In the section 'Relationships', this edition omits "The Second Staircase" and adds "Reply Guaranteed" and "The Telephones".
The 1990
Carroll & Graf
Carroll & Graf Publishers was an American publishing company based in New York City, New York that published a wide range of fiction and non-fiction by both new and established authors, as well as reprinted previously hard-to-find works. It c ...
paperback reproduces the contents of the original Arkham House edition.
Critical response
Campbell has acknowledged that the stories in the book were written primarily under the stylistic influence of
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
. Campbell was attempting to move away from his dependence on the influence of
H.P. Lovecraft, and the style of these stories is radically different from the
Cthulhu Mythos The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American Horror fiction, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, t ...
tales found in his first collection.
The book's first appearance induced
T. E. D. Klein to write an extensive and highly positive review, "Ramsey Campbell: An Appreciation" in ''Nyctalops'' magazine and critic
S. T. Joshi
Sunand Tryambak Joshi (born June 22, 1958) is an American literary critic whose work has largely focused on weird and fantastic fiction, especially the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft and associated writers.
Career
His literary critic ...
has stated
[Joshi, S. T. ''Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction'' (2001), p.56] that:
its ... allusiveness of narration; careful, at times even obsessive focusing on the fleeting sensations and psychological processes of characters; an aggressively modern setting that allows commentary on social, cultural and political issues - all conjoin to make ''Demons by Daylight'' perhaps the most important book of horror fiction since Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft ...
's '' The Outsider and Others''.
Contents
''Demons by Daylight'' contains the following stories, grouped into three sections:
# ''Nightmares''
#* "Potential"
#* "The End of a Summer's Day"
#* "At First Sight"
# ''Errol Undercliffe: a tribute''
#* "The Franklyn Paragraphs"
#* "The Interloper" (as by
Errol Undercliffe)
# ''Relationships''
#* "The Sentinels"
#* "The Guy"
#* "The Old Horns"
#* "The Lost"
#* "The Stocking"
#* "The Second Staircase"
#* "Concussion"
#* "The Enchanted Fruit"
#* "Made in Goatswood"
References
Sources
*
*
*
*{{cite book , last=Nielsen , first=Leon , title=Arkham House Books: A Collector's Guide , location=Jefferson, NC and London , publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc., pages=117 , year=2004 , isbn=0-7864-1785-4
1973 short story collections
Fantasy short story collections
Horror short story collections