Victorian ghost stories · an Oxford anthology

Includes bibliographical references (p. [493]-497)

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