Product Description

The thrill and chill of the ghost story is displayed in all its variety and vitality through this marvellous anthology. Ranging from the early 19th century to the 1960s, the collection reveals the development of the genre, and showcases many of its greatest expositors - from Sir Walter Scott, H. G. Wells, M. R. James, T. H. White, Walter de la Mare, and Elizabeth Bowen in the UK to Edith Wharton in America. Though its heyday coincided with the golden age of Empire in the nineteenth century, the ghost story enjoyed a second flowering between the two World Wars and its popularity is as great as ever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28445 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Review
An excellent anthology, full of uncanny pleasures and unsettling tales. Guaranteed to make your flesh crawl. (Waterstones Books Quarterly )

About the Author
Michael Cox is Senior Commissioning Editor, Reference Books, at OUP and is currently compiling 'The Oxford Chronology of English Literature' on a freelance basis. His previous books for the Press include 'A Dictionary of Writers and Their Works', 'Victorian Ghost Stories' (with R. A. Gilbert), 'Victorian Detective Stories', and 'The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories'.

Customer Reviews

The best English ghost story anthology in print.
Lest five stars seem excessive for yet another "ghost book", I must say that I think that Cox and Gilbert have produced simply the best one-volume anthology of English-language ghost stories that there has ever been. For all that supernatural fictions have long been popular choices for the anthologist, this collection features more of the best and most enduring English ghost stories than have ever before appeared between two covers. Cox and Gilbert have included virtually all of the necessary favourites and many lesser-known gems as well. All of the major authors in the field are represented by some of their very best work and all the major movements within the English ghost-story are represented as well. For all that I could quibble about one or two inclusions and omissions, I honestly don't think that a better introduction to the English ghost story exists. Unreservedly recommended.

An excellent compilation
A terrific compilation of traditional ghost stories from classic authors such as Walter Scott, John Buchan and W Somerset Maugham. If you are a fan of MR James or Sheridan Le Fanu you will definitely enjoy this book. All round a satisfying read.

If I were to make a suggestion on how you could improve the book, it would be the inclusion of a more comprehensive introduction, with more detail about the authors and what by what criteria the editors made their selection. However it would be a bit churlish to view this as a criticism, it doesn't detract from the quality of the stories.

Classics, the Tame, and Others
This book was published in 1986 and contained 42 short stories by as many writers. There were 35 writers from Great Britain, 4 from the U.S. and 3 from Ireland.

The works ranged from the 1820s (Walter Scott) to the 1960s (Aickman, Simon Raven). All but seven of the works were from the period between 1890 and 1960. Nine of the writers in the collection were women.

The editors tried to select stories that (1) featured -- naturally -- a ghost, (2) described dramatic interaction between the living and the dead, (3) had literary quality, (4) contained definite English settings such as characters, institutions, styles and themes representative of the English ghost story, and (5) weren't overlong. They tried to strike a balance between classics and lesser-known tales and show the development of stories particularly from 1890 to 1940, when they said the genre was at its peak. The pieces from writers outside Great Britain were included because they were deemed to show clearly their English roots.

An introduction briefly surveyed the English ghost story. The editors saw it as beginning to develop into a distinct form in the 1820s with Sir Walter Scott, with maturity furthered by LeFanu and Dickens and the greatest creativity achieved between 1890 and 1940. The contribution of many female authors was noted. The editors stated that at the time of the anthology's publication in the 1980s the literary ghost story still appealed, though it had been overtaken in popularity by science fiction and "crude horror."

Before 1890 or so, stories often went like this: a strange or tragic event occurred, it turned out to be caused by a ghost, especially a bad one, the end. Or someone saw a ghost repeating a tragic event. Later authors offered a much greater variety of tales. Classic works in the collection included an earlier one like "Squire Toby's Will" by LeFanu and later ones like "The Monkey's Paw" by Jacobs, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" by M. R. James, "The Empty House" by Blackwood -- a fantastic, atmospheric description of an expedition into a haunted house -- and "Smee" by A. M. Burrage. Judging from all the stories included, most variations of the literary ghost story were played out by the 1930s, and the most original writer from postwar times was Robert Aickman.

A number of the non-classic works in the collection seemed comparatively tame; authors who were academics and vicars were well represented. Other pieces, like those of Vernon Lee, Henry James, H. Russell Wakefield, were virtually unreadable. Welcome variety was provided by a lush, darkly ironic work by Elizabeth Bowen and one by Robert Aickman, which featured a powerful atmosphere of menace without a clear resolution, unlike most earlier tales. Also, stories from the 1920s by John Buchan and May Sinclair in which ghosts/haunted places had positive effects. The one by Buchan contained a nice description of English virtues, and Sinclair's story reworked ironically the conventional relations between murderer and victim, ghost and human. Another one from the 1920s, by Maugham, foretold death in a striking way.

It would've been enjoyable to read more examples in the collection of horror focused on the mind, probing more deeply things psychological, along the lines of something like LeFanu's "Green Tea." Other authors who might've been included in this collection: Kipling, Robert Hichens and Elizabeth Howard.

Readers who enjoyed the stories in this anthology might enjoy collections like The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories and The Penguin Book of Horror Stories, many of whose pieces were written in a similar traditional vein. Readers looking for a more exciting variety of pieces, both older and newer, might enjoy a collection like The Dark Descent. (Falling somewhere between these two poles, in my opinion, is Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, published in the U.S. in 1944.) Those interested most in the fairly recent and "crude," or in horror mixed with science fiction, fantasy and mystery, might enjoy The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural and The Mammoth Book of Terror.