1. Robert Fordyce Aickman was an English writer and conservationist.
31 Facts About Robert Aickman
1. 2.
Robert Aickman wrote what and how he wanted, for expression, not for popularity.
3.
Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography, by R B Russell, is the first full-length biography of Aickman.
4.
Robert Aickman was born in London, England, the son of architect William Arthur Robert Aickman and Mabel Violet Marsh.
5.
Robert Aickman attended Highgate School from January 1928 until July 1931.
6.
Mike Ashley reported that at the time he compiled his Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction, Robert Aickman objected to the inclusion of his date of birth.
7.
Robert Aickman was involved in an investigation into the well-known haunting of Borley Rectory.
8.
Robert Aickman originally helped with some clerical work in his father's architectural office.
9.
Robert Aickman was reading by the time he was four and he went to very good schools.
10.
Robert Aickman was married to literary agent and children's book author Edith Ray Gregorson from 1941 to 1957.
11.
Robert Aickman authored Lemuel and Timothy Tramcar.
12.
Robert Aickman had been responsible for the general direction of the very successful Market Harborough Festival of Boats and Yachts, attended by more than 50,000 visitors.
13.
Robert Aickman was diagnosed with cancer in the winter of 1979.
14.
Robert Aickman refused to have conventional treatment and consulted a homoeopath.
15.
Robert Aickman had planned to go to the US in the autumn of 1980, to receive a fantasy award, but he was too ill to travel, despite rallying in the summer.
16.
Robert Aickman died in the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital on 26 February 1981.
17.
In 2015 R B Russell and Rosalie Parker of Tartarus Press released a feature-length documentary on the life and work of Robert Aickman, which was premiered at the World Fantasy Convention.
18.
Robert Aickman is probably best remembered for his co-founding of the Inland Waterways Association, a group devoted to restoring and preserving England's then-neglected and largely derelict inland canal system.
19.
Robert Aickman wanted to campaign to keep all of the waterways open, whereas Rolt had sympathies with the traditional canal workers and believed it necessary to prioritise which canals could be kept open.
20.
The disagreement became public: Robert Aickman had organised the IWA's first boat rally and festival in August 1950 and attempted to prevent Rolt from attending and promoting his book The Inland Waterways of England; nevertheless, Rolt attended, as did his publisher, Philip Unwin.
21.
Robert Aickman engineered a change to the rules to require all members to conform to agreed IWA principles, and in early 1951 Rolt and others were excluded from membership.
22.
Robert Aickman published two nonfiction books on the waterways in 1955.
23.
Robert Aickman had hoped to have the work illustrated by Edward Gorey.
24.
In 1975, Robert Aickman received the World Fantasy Award for short fiction for his story "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal".
25.
In 1981, the year of his death, Robert Aickman was awarded the British Fantasy Award for his story "The Stains", which had first appeared in the anthology New Terrors, edited by Ramsey Campbell.
26.
Robert Aickman was assisted in this by Christine Bernard, an editor at Collins.
27.
Robert Aickman selected six of his own stories for inclusion over the course of the series.
28.
Robert Aickman supplied an introduction for every volume except the sixth.
29.
Robert Aickman's autobiographical writing consists of the two memoirs The Attempted Rescue and The River Runs Uphill: A Story of Success and Failure.
30.
Robert Aickman's reviews remain, to date, uncollected in book form.
31.
Robert Aickman wrote two books relating to his conservation activities, Know Your Waterways and The Story of Our Inland Waterways.