The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories

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. 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 Jéromette 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