Clive Barker

Clive Barker (born in Liverpool in 1952) is a British writer, filmmaker and visual artist, and one of the most influential figures in horror and fantasy since the 1980s. He studied English and philosophy at the University of Liverpool. His significance lies both in his fiction and in the way his stories moved into film and painting.

His career began in the theatre. In 1978 he co-founded the avant-garde troupe The Dog Company with former schoolmates, and over the following five years he wrote nine plays, often directing them, including The History of the Devil, Frankenstein in Love and The Secret Life of Cartoons. When he turned away from the stage, it was the short story collection Books of Blood that made him known. He then published The Damnation Game, a Faustian novel, and moved toward modern fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show and Imajica.

His style rests on a hidden world coexisting with ours, on the role of sexuality in the supernatural, and on intricate, coherent mythologies. Stephen King, quoted on the early American paperbacks of Books of Blood, declared that he had seen the future of horror and that its name was Clive Barker. Barker later wrote the Abarat series, one of his best-selling works.

For film, he wrote and directed Hellraiser (1987), based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, and his story “The Forbidden” became the basis for Candyman (1992) and three sequels. He also served as executive producer of Gods and Monsters (1998). As a painter and illustrator, his work has been shown in galleries in the United States and has appeared in his books. His legacy lies in bringing horror closer to fantasy and in his influence on the horror fiction and films that followed.