The Essential Victorian Ghost Stories, Annotated and Illustrated: Classic Tales of Murder, Mystery, Horror & Hauntings: 10th Anniversary Third Edition

An authoritative, illustrated and deeply annotated edition of essential Victorian ghost stories, this anthology brings together some of the most chilling and influential supernatural fiction of the nineteenth century. From the psychological unease of J. Sheridan Le Fanu and the wintry melancholy of Elizabeth Gaskell, to the modernizing horror of M. R. James, the uncanny domestic nightmares of Edith Nesbit, and the maritime and scientific terrors of Bram Stoker, H. G. Wells, and others, these stories trace the full arc of Victorian Gothic imagination at its most vivid and unsettling.Alongside well-known classics are rare and seldom reprinted tales, carefully selected to reveal the darker, more ambiguous side of the period’s fiction—stories of haunted houses that refuse to stay silent, spectral warnings delivered too late, and everyday lives disrupted by forces just beyond rational explanation. The collection also foregrounds the essential contributions of women writers and transatlantic voices, whose work reshaped the genre with psychological depth, social unease, and unexpected brutality.Extensive editorial notes and contextual introductions illuminate the historical, cultural, and literary forces behind each story without diminishing their suspense or atmosphere. The result is both a rigorous scholarly resource and a genuinely unsettling reading experience—ideal for students of Gothic literature and readers simply seeking expertly curated, spine-tingling Victorian ghost stories that still retain their power to disturb.TALES INCLUDED IN THIS EDITION:Schalken the Painter (J. Sheridan Le Fanu);The Old Nurse’s Story (Elizabeth Gaskell);To Be Read at Dusk (Charles Dickens);Strange Disturbances in Aungier St. (J. Sheridan Le Fanu); The Cold Embrace (Mary Elizabeth Braddon);The Phantom Coach (Amelia B. Edwards);The Signal-Man (Charles Dickens); Nothing But the Truth (Rhoda Broughton);Squire Toby’s Will (J. Sheridan Le Fanu);Behold, it was a Dream! (Rhoda Broughton); The Story of Clifford House (Anonymous);The Open Door (Margaret Oliphant); The Body Snatcher (Robert Louis Stevenson);The Upper Berth (F. Marion Crawford);The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star’ (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle);John Charrington’s Wedding (Edith Nesbit);The Judge’s House (Bram Stoker);Owen Wingrave (Henry James);Man-Size in Marble (Edith Nesbit);The Red Room (The Ghost of Fear) (H. G. Wells);The Mystery of the Semi-Detached (Edith Nesbit);Lost Hearts (M. R. James); Jerry Bundler (W. W. Jacobs); The Story of the Brown Hand (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle); The Inexperienced Ghost (H. G. Wells) Read more