Victorian Ghost Stories

Ghost stories were something at which the Victorians excelled. In an age of rapid material and scientific progress the idea of a vindictive past able to reach out and violate the present held an especial potential for terror, and throughout the nineteenth century fictional ghost stories developed in parallel with the more general Victorian fascination for death and what lay beyond it. Though they were as much a part of the cultural and literary fabric of the age as imperial confidence, the best of them still retain their original power to unsettle and surprise.

In this anthology, the editors of the highly successful Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories map out the development of the ghost story from 1850 to the early years of the twentieth century and demonstrate the importance of this form of short fiction in Victorian popular culture. As well as reprinting stories by supernatural specialists such as J. S. Le Fanu, M. R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, this selection also emphasizes the key role played by women writers Elizabeth Gaskell, Mrs Craik, Rhoda Broughton, Mrs Henry Wood, M. E. Braddon, Amelia B. Edwards, Charlotte Riddell, B. M. Croker, and E. Nesbit, among many others, and offers one or two genuine rarities for the supernatural fiction enthusiast to savour. Other writers represented include Charles Dickens, Henry James, George MacDonald, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, R. L. Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Jerome K. Jerome, Bernard Capes, R. H. Benson, and W. W. Jacobs. The editors also provide an informative introduction, detailed source notes, and an extensive survey of ghost-story collections from 1850 to 1910. This collection will delight all lovers of traditional ghost stories: here are 35 well-wrought tales of haunted houses, vengeful spirits, spectral warnings, invisible antagonists, and motiveless malignity from beyond the grave, every one guaranteed to generate 'the pleasurable shudder.'