British Ghost Stories

BRITISH GHOST STORIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE GHOST STORY

Selected and Introduced by Stephen Carver.

‘Only their eyes, their terrible eyes, were living; and those eyes were all turned menacingly upon me!’ – Amelia B. Edwards.

‘I want to know what it is that walks about his room sometimes when he’s out and when the door’s locked on the outside.’ – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

‘The madness of the living is a thing so abominable and fearful as to chill every human heart with horror; it is less than nothing in comparison with the madness of the dead!’ – Aleister Crowley.

The Golden Age of the Ghost Story can be dated roughly from the last of the original gothic novels to the First World War. It runs from J.S. Le Fanu’s early Victorian chillers, through Dickens’ Christmas stories and the rise of Spiritualism, up to Le Fanu’s natural heir, M.R. James. British Ghost Stories collects the eeriest tales of this period, selecting one from each of the most skilled UK writers of short supernatural fiction, men and women from England, Ireland, and Scotland, appending the first modern ghost story by Daniel Defoe. Each story is introduced with a brief biography of its author and its original publication details. This collection also includes the original stories from the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas series, ‘The Signal-man’, ‘A Warning to the Curious’, ‘Lot No. 249’, ‘Man-size in Marble’, and ‘The Room in the Tower’, with an Introduction exploring the history of the series, including ten tips from M.R. James on how to craft the perfect ghost story.

Contents:

The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott
An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street by J.S. Le Fanu
The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Haunted and the Haunters by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards
The Signal-man by Charles Dickens
The Ghost at the Rath by Rosa Mulholland
Eveline’s Visitant by Elizabeth Braddon
Reality or Delusion? by Ellen Wood
No Living Voice by Thomas Street Millington
Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman by Wilkie Collins
Old Mrs. Jones by Charlotte Riddell
The Body-Snatcher by R. L. Stevenson
Man-size in Marble by E. Nesbit
The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling
The Judge’s House by Bram Stoker
The Man of Science by Jerone K. Jerome
Lot No. 249 by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost by H. G. Wells
Out of the Sea by A. C. Benson
A Strange Goldfield by Guy Boothby
Keeping His Promise by Algernon Blackwood
The Highwaymen by Lord Dunsany
Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon
The Whistling Room by William Hope Hodgson
The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions
The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson
The Testament of Magdalen Blair by Aleister Crowley
The Death Mask by H. D. Everett
The Nature of the Evidence by May Sinclair
A Warning to the Curious by M. R. James
Crewe by Walter de la Mare
A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe