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Douglas E. Winter (review date 1986)

SOURCE: Winter, Douglas E. “Clive Barker: Britain's New Master of Horror.” Washington Post Book World (24 August 1986): 6.

[In the following review of the first three Books of Blood and The Inhuman Condition, Winter asserts that Barker is the most important horror fiction writer of the 1980s.]

During a 1983 visit with Britain's leading writer of horror fiction, Ramsey Campbell, I was presented with a mountainous manuscript of short stories by an unpublished Liverpool playright named Clive Barker. “You're about to read the most important new horror writer of this decade,” Campbell told me. After reading 50 of the thousand-plus pages, I was convinced that he was right.

The manuscript, divided into three volumes, was published in England in 1984 as Clive Barker's Books of Blood, and its author became horror fiction's hottest property since Stephen King. Barker soon...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Michael Morrison (review date 1985)
   2. Michael A. Morrison (review date 1985)
   3. Chris Morgan (review date 1985)
   4. Fleming Meeks (review date 1986)
   5. Douglas E. Winter (review date 1986)
   6. Ken Tucker (review date 1986)
   7. Michael A. Morrison (review date 1986)
   8. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1986)
   9. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1986)
   10. Cosette Keis (review date 1987)
   11. Elizabeth Gleick (review date 1987)
   12. Laurence Coven (review date 1987)
   13. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1987)
   14. Science Fiction Chronicle (review date 1989)
   15. Ken Anderson (review date 1989)
   16. Craig William Burns (essay date 1993)
   17. Gary Hoppenstand (essay date 1994)
   18. Linda Badley (essay date 1996)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright