His works include the comic series The Sandman (1989–1996) and the novels Good Omens (1990), Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), Coraline (2002), Anansi Boys (2005), The Graveyard Book (2008) and The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013).

[7] His great-grandfather emigrated to England from Antwerp before 1914[8] and his grandfather settled in Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores, changing the family name from Chaiman to Gaiman.

"[13] When he was about 10 years old, he read his way through the works of Dennis Wheatley; The Ka of Gifford Hillary and The Haunting of Toby Jugg made a special impact on him.

[6] Gaiman has mentioned several writers who have influenced his work, including Mary Shelley,[15][23] Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Dave Sim,[24][25] Alan Moore, Steve Ditko,[26] Will Eisner,[27] Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, John Crowley, Lord Dunsany, G. K. Chesterton and Gene Wolfe.

[36] In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published.

[40][41] In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style.

He wrote three graphic novels with his favourite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch.

[46][47] Karen Berger, who later became head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read Black Orchid and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, the Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.

[48] The various artists who contributed to the series include Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, and Michael Zulli, with lettering by Todd Klein, colours by Daniel Vozzo, and covers by Dave McKean.

In the eighth issue of The Sandman, Gaiman and artist Mike Dringenberg introduced Death, the older sister of Dream, who became as popular as the series' title character.

[52][53] DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that "The Sandman became the first extraordinary success as a series of graphic novel collections, reaching out and converting new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses, and making Gaiman himself into an iconic cultural figure.

[60] Gaiman's adaptation of Sweeney Todd, illustrated by Michael Zulli for Stephen R. Bissette's publication Taboo, was stopped when the anthology itself was discontinued.

Gaiman wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a boy's fascination with Michael Moorcock's anti-hero Elric of Melniboné for Ed Kramer's anthology Tales of the White Wolf.

Nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the original fiction anthology featured stories and contributions by Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Gene Wolfe, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Tad Williams, and others.

[76][77] After teaming with Colleen Doran for a series of graphic novel adaptations based on his short stories "Troll Bridge", "Chivalry", and "Snow, Glass, Apples", Gaiman and the Terry Pratchett estate chose Doran to adapt Good Omens into graphic novel form, and to self publish the work via the Pratchett estate's Dunmanifestin label.

[103] Several of Gaiman's original works have been optioned or greenlighted for film adaptation, most notably Stardust, which premiered in August 2007 and stars Charlie Cox, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes and Mark Strong, directed by Matthew Vaughn.

A stop-motion version of Coraline was released on 6 February 2009, directed by Henry Selick and starring the voices of Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher.

[122] Gaiman received a Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form Hugo Award in 2020 for the TV miniseries adaptation of Good Omens, for which he wrote the screenplay.

The performance featured James McAvoy as Richard, Natalie Dormer, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Bernard Cribbens, and Johnny Vegas.

[125] In September 2014, Gaiman and Terry Pratchett joined forces with BBC Radio 4 to make the first-ever dramatisation of their co-penned novel Good Omens, which was broadcast in December in five half-hour episodes and culminated in an hour-long final apocalyptic showdown.

McFarlane was promoting his new title by having guest authors Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Dave Sim each write a single issue.

The presiding judge, however, ruled against their agreement being work for hire, based in large part on the legal requirement that "copyright assignments must be in writing.

Weeks later, their marriage collapsed and Gaiman left the country,[21] travelling from New Zealand to his holiday home on the Isle of Skye, which broke COVID-19 lockdown rules.

[21] A former tenant of Gaiman's named Caroline Wallner alleges that he demanded sexual favours in exchange for being allowed to continue living on his property.

[158][159] In September 2024, Disney halted production on the film adaptation of The Graveyard Book due to a variety of factors, including the sexual assault allegations against Gaiman.

"[174] The original American Gods blog was extracted for publication in the NESFA Press collection of Gaiman miscellany, Adventures in the Dream Trade.

[citation needed] Analyzing Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, bibliographer and librarian Richard Bleiler detects patterns of and allusions to the Gothic novel, from Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

He concludes that Gaiman is "utilizing works, characters, themes, and settings that generations of scholars have identified and classified as Gothic... [yet] subverts them and develops the novel by focusing on the positive aspects of maturation, concentrating on the values of learning, friendship, and sacrifice.

"[196] Clay Smith has argued that this sort of allusiveness serves to situate Gaiman as a strong authorial presence in his own works, often to the exclusion of his collaborators.

"[198] David Rudd takes a more generous view in his study of the novel Coraline, where he argues that the work plays and riffs productively on Sigmund Freud's concept of Unheimlich ("the Uncanny").