The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories
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The Victorians excelled at telling ghost stories. In an age of rapid scientific progress, the idea of a vindictive past able to reach out and violate the present held a special potential for terror. Throughout the nineteenth century, fictional ghost stories developed in parallel with the more general Victorian fascination with 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 the stories still retain their original power to surprise and unsettle.
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In Victorian Ghost Stories, the editors 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 and M. R. James, this selection emphasizes the key role played by women writers—including Elizabeth Gaskell, Rhoda Broughton, and Charlotte Riddell—and offers one or two genuine rarities. Other writers represented include Charles Dickens, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and R. L. Stevenson. There is also a fascinating Introduction and a chronological list of ghost story collections from 1850 to 1910.
Includes:
The old nurse's story by Elizabeth Gaskell
An account of some strange disturbances in Aungier Street by J.S. Le Fanu
The miniature by J.Y. Akerman
The last house in C-Street by Dinah Mulock
To be taken with a grain of salt by Charles Dickens
The Botathen ghost by R.S. Hawker
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth by Rhoda Broughton
The romance of certain old clothes by Henry James
Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse by Anonymous
Reality or delusion? by Mrs Henry Wood
Uncle Cornelius, his story by George MacDonald
The shadow of a shade by Tom Hood
At Chrighton Abbey by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
No living voice by Thomas Street Millington
Miss Jeromette and the clergyman by Wilkie Collins
The story of Clifford House by Anonymous
Was it an illusion? by Amelia B. Edwards
The open door by Charlotte Riddell
The captain of the "Pole-star" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The body-snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson
The story of the rippling train by Mary Louisa Molesworth
At the end of the passage by Rudyard Kipling
"To let" by B.M. Croker
John Charrington's wedding by E. Nesbit
The haunted organist of Hurly Burly by Rosa Mulholland
The man of science by Jerome K. Jerome
Canon Alberic's scrap-book by M.R. James
Jerry Bundler by W.W. Jacobs
An Eddy on the floor by Bernard Capes
The tomb of Sarah by F.G. Loring
The case of Vincent Pyrwhit by Barry Pain
The shadows on the wall by Mary E. Wilkins
Father Macclesfield's tale by R.H. Benson
Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon
The kit-bag by Algernon Blackwood
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