RCH - The Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes Archive - 1971-2001
The material covers the approximate dates of 1971-2001, and most of the material has been written by Chetwynd-Hayes. The collection largely comprises typescripts of Chetwynd-Hayes' work, with some miscellaneous items such as book covers and obituaries published upon RCH's death. Typescripts are i...
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| Archive level description: | Sub-fonds |
| Physical Description: | 7 boxes |
| Languages: | English |
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| Summary: | The material covers the approximate dates of 1971-2001, and most of the material has been written by Chetwynd-Hayes. The collection largely comprises typescripts of Chetwynd-Hayes' work, with some miscellaneous items such as book covers and obituaries published upon RCH's death. Typescripts are in the form of novels, short stories (both collected and uncollected), and scripts. Many of the typescripts include annotations and corrections in RCH's handwriting. Some of the typescripts are incomplete. The majority of material is undated. The collection contains drafts of the following novels by Chetwynd-Hayes:
And drafts of the following collections of Chetwynd-Hayes' short stories:
Also included are drafts for two anthologies edited by Chetwynd-Hayes (World of the Impossible and Phantoms and Fiends), a typescript of Three Cheers for Cathy, an unpublished work, and the typescript drafts of 27 of Chetwynd-Hayes' short stories. The collection also includes miscellaneous items such as issues of Weird Tales and Scarlet Street magazines, book flats, an untitles typescript and obituaries after RCH's death. |
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| Date: | 1971-2001 |
| Reference Number: | RCH |
| Arrangement: | Material has been sorted by genre: Novels, Collections, Anthologies and Short Stories, with miscellaneous or untitled items at the end of the sequence. Within each genre material has been sorted by order of publication. As most of the collection is undated, the publication order has been determined by RCH's bibliography on the fantasticfiction.co.uk website . |
| Biographical/Administrative Information: | Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes was born on the 30th May 1919, in Isleworth, London. After his education he was enlisted to fight in the Second World War, and after 6 years of fighting Sergeant Chetwynd-Hayes was demobbed in 1946. Working as a salesman, he wrote in his spare time, finally publishing his first novel, The Man from the Bomb, in 1959. He began to publish short stories on a regular basis from 1966, when The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories bought Chetwynd-Hayes' story The Thing. His writing style combined horror with humour, frequently utilising monsters and supernatural occurrences, and he became best-known as a writer of ghost stories. From the 1970's he began publishing his own short story collections, as well as becoming a prolific anthologist, editing 6 anthologies in that decade. Some of his stories were adapted for the movies From Beyond the Grave (1973) and The Monster Club (1980). In 1973 he took over the editorship of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories from Robert Aickman, and created and edited the Armada Monster Book series in 1975. In the 1980's and 90's he wrote two long-running series, the Clavering Grange series and the Psychic Detective series. In 1989 he won both the Life Achievement award from the Horror Writers of America, and a Special Award from the British Fantasy Society. He died on the 20th March 2001, from bronchial pneumonia. |