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,