Quote Originally Posted by Maltese Falcon
Does anyone know if there is a place on the web to view or purchase the early novels of FE Campbell? For those who do not know, he was a writer for House of Milan (HOM) who wrote scores of novels from the mid 1970s until the late 1990s. Although his work got rather repetitive and formulatic in later years, his early novels were really well crafted and clever. I have only read a couple of them, but I would like to find more. They are long out of print.

If you happen to have any of the first 25 or so Campbell novels, you might consider scanning and getting them on the Web for the sake of posterity. I for one would appreciate it.

Thanks.
I have virtually all of FE Campbell's novels, but having once scanned a similar sized book I know how much time it took, and there's no way I could do that, unfortunately. I agree with others that his best work was the early novels, and I know he had help once he became infirm, but once you got hooked on something like that, you want more, don't you. He had a contract to deliver four novels at a time in later years. At least, that was what he did. The covers were illustrated by Bishop, who did hundreds of excellent bondage and rubber drawings by hand, mostly mono. Marvellous art before the days of computer graphics.

What I like best in FE Campbell's work was that he brought female slavery to life as an erotic fantasy. Body piercings were unashamedly a part of that, while today we don't find very much use of piercings as a fantasy element in bdsm fiction. He knew all about every kind of punishment implement as well. When he described the use of a tawse, you knew exactly how it felt by the time he had finished. Also, from time to time he made delightful use of dildos mounted on posts for restraint purposes, and my description is crude by comparison with his. I believe he had tremendous bdsm experience in his early life, but whether he did or not, what he wrote was utterly believable.

FE Campbell had schools for girls in which slavery was the only important subject, castles and country estates full of beautiful slaves who were taught not merely obedience, but the delights of erotic bondage, erotic piercings, restraint and punishment. He described slave caravans on their way across Africa and Arabia, but his female slaves were always erotic. His girls were never allowed to forget for a moment what they were sexually. Political correctness had not been invented. To him, sexual equality meant being what you are. His girls waited, restrained, for the caress of the whip and were glad of it. He knew all about medieval apparatus too. Stocks, racks and pillories appeared frequently, and he knew exactly how to exploit female vulnerabilities.

Pony girls were another favourite, described far more richly than anything we see today. He knew what he was talking about. Ginger suppositories preceded the insertion of tails, and the harnesses were described in graphic detail. Body rings played an important part. It is hard not to imagine that he wrote from experience.

Frank Campbell had a way of describing the erotic things girls did with girls as if that was the inevitable consequence of being naked together, a temptation no girl could resist. In the context of a harem or a school, I dare say he knew more than most men did. But all the time it was the eroticism, rather than any sexual orientation hangup, that came across.

I regard FE Campbell as probably the most important adult fantasy writer of the twentieth century. His earliest books never saw a word processor, but they flowed.

He was English originally, but spent most of his life in North America. In his later years he lived in Alberta, Canada.