Made in Goatswood, edited by Scott David Aniolowski, and published by Chaosium, is a collection of stories by various writers set in Campbell's fictionalized Gloucestershire. In 1995 he contributed a rather tongue-in-cheek story set in the Severn Valley, " The Horror Under Warrendown", to an anthology of horror fiction called Made in Goatswood.
His next collection, Demons by Daylight (1973), though described by Campbell as a conscious effort to throw off Lovecraft's influence, again used this Cthulhu Mythos-linked setting for several tales: " Potential", " The Sentinels", " The Interloper", " The Enchanted Fruit", " Made in Goatswood", and a metafictional examination of Campbell's own Lovecraftian beginnings called " The Franklyn Paragraphs".Īfter Demons by Daylight, Campbell returned to the Severn Valley sporadically, in such works as " Dolls" (in 1986's Scared Stiff), " The Tugging" ( The Disciples of Cthulhu 1996), and the 2003 novel The Darkest Part of the Woods. ~ Cold Print (website), "A Demon by Daylight"Ĭampbell's first collection of short stories, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (1964), was filled with stories that take place in the Severn Valley setting, including "The Room in the Castle", " The Horror From the Bridge", " The Insects from Shaggai", " The Render of the Veils", " The Inhabitant of the Lake", " The Moon-Lens", " The Mine on Yuggoth", " The Plain of Sound", and " The Stone on the Island". And because I saw the city all around me as this kind of gothic, almost supernatural landscape, I think a lot of that fed into my writing. Whole slews of ruined streets, which I was perfectly happy to wander through on my way to odd, out of the way cinemas. There was probably a period when I was reading and trying to imitate Lovecraft, whilst equally exploring what was then a considerably ruined Merseyside landscape. At the time, the teenage Campbell had never been to the actual Severn Valley the imaginary landscapes he described may relate more to the post-World War II Merseyside scenes he was familiar with. In that story, Campbell refers to hints "of actual worship of trans-spatial beings still practiced in such towns as Camside, Brichester, Severnford, Goatswood, and Temphill," indicating that he had already conceived of most of the principal locations of his Severn Valley setting. It was transposed to the Cotswold town of Temphill when it appeared as "The Church in High Street", Campbell's first published story, in the 1962 Arkham House anthology Dark Mind, Dark Heart. His short story " The Tomb-Herd", for example, was originally set in Lovecraft's Kingsport, Massachusetts.
"Derleth told me to abandon my attempts to set my work in Massachusetts," Campbell wrote in the introduction to his collection Cold Print, and he accordingly rewrote his stories with an English setting. This area is more correctly referred to as the Vale of Berkeley or the Severn Estuary the real-world Severn Valley refers to an area around fifty miles (80 km) further north.Ĭampbell invented his locales, when, as a 15-year-old Lovecraft fan, he submitted Lovecraftian pastiches, set in Lovecraft's New England, to Arkham House's August Derleth.
" The Room in the Castle" These references place "Campbell Country" in the southern part of Gloucestershire, roughly between the cities of Gloucester and Bristol. Campbell's stories mention various real-world locales, including the Cotswold Hills, " The Church in High Street" Berkeley, and the A38 road. The River Severn is an actual river in Wales and western England.
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