The Oxford Book Of Victorian Ghost Stories (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
Review from Badelynge.Excellent selection of 35 ghost stories from the Victorian age, chronologically compiled here dating from 1852-1908. The stories included have been selected as much for aspects of innovation or for the part they played in influencing stylistic developments within the genre than their actual quality. Though there are some great ghost stories here and barring three or four stories are generally of very good quality.Along with the stories are a comprehensive list of all ghost story collections published during the half century of years following 1840, full source details for the 35 stories and an introduction by editor Michael Cox.Highlights for me include:The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell. It's probably the best written ghost story here with superb characterisation, lush prose and as a ghost story endlessly imitated even today.An Account Of Some Strange Disturbances In Aungier Street by J.S.Le Fanu. One of his best and the veteran of countless anthologies.The Open Door by Charlotte Riddell. Not particularly scary but a well written example of its type and introducing a rare detective element.The Captain of the Pole-star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Eery arctic tale coloured by Doyle's own experience of life on a steam-whaler.The Kit-bag by Algernon Blackwood. Only Blackwood could imbue such an innocent inanimate object with such a deep sense of malevolent dread.The only ones I'd have left out would be:An Eddy On The Floor by Bernard Capes which although suitably macabre is also a shade too long compared to the other entries and probably the least accessible due to its convoluted syntax.Miss Jeromette And The Clergyman - a very weak effort by Wilkie Collins.The Tomb of Sarah by F.G.Loring - Nice story but very much a vampire tale.Reading these in order shows how the genre developed. It's a genre that in the Victorian era was very much designed to be read aloud at the fireside after dinner and ever associated with mid winter and Christmas. It goes through phases of doomed love triangles, vengeful victims, tragic victims of accident defeating mortality to see their loved ones a final time, portentous warnings, cursed objects and places, spiritualism, tragic reenactments etc.There will probably never be a definitive collection of ghost stories. The editor could easily have selected 35 alternate stories and still pleased this reader as much. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Ghost stories were ludicrously popular during the Victorian period -- a time of huge transition, an age shaped more than any other by change, mostly industrial, but with the final consequences of these changes remaining unclear. With this shadow of change falling across life in general culminating, no doubt, in anxiety, the ghost story not only gave the Victorian reader an outlet for this anxiety but the ghosts themselves anchored a stable past in an unstable present.Having said all this I was quite disappointed with this anthology. Some of the stories are brilliant; those by Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Jerome K Jerome, RLStevenson and Conan Doyle stand out particularly of course (although Kipling's offering is poor in the extreme); but most of them are formulaic, haunted house stories, which perhaps in the context of the time, read once a week in a magazine or so forth, were entertaining but when read one after another are a little tiresome.My favourite was that by Elizabeth Gaskell. However, I'm not entirely sure if this is because it's any better than the others or because it was the first one and therefore still maintained an element of surprise!
What do You think about The Oxford Book Of Victorian Ghost Stories (2003)?
I had to read this as part of the assigned reading for a literature class. Personally, I'm not keen on reading anthologies as I don't like paying full-book prices when it's likely I'll only enjoy a quarter of it, but the syllabus spoke, and for the sake of my GPA, I obeyed.Being that it's billed as "Victorian" ghost stories, I expected things to be rather fussy, a la Wilkins. To my surprise, many of the stories were downright scary. Modern readers may tend to associate ghost stories with things like the Amityville Horror, with the resulting gore, but these were gems of psychological horror. These were stories that made me twitch at the noises in the house I usually dismissed. I ended up reading the whole thing, and not just the assigned titles, and loved them.
—Courtney
A very nice compilation of ghost stories, of varying quality. Thurnley Abbey, the Le Fanu entry, and of course the M. R. James are standouts. A couple are set in India, but, disappointingly to me, use perfectly conventional English ghost story subject matter and only use the Indian setting for a little background color -- I guess in its own way, that tells you something about the British in India. Lots of major writers are represented -- Wilkie Collins, Kipling, Conan Doyle -- as well as some nice pieces from magazine writers I'd never heard of.The many incidental details of domestic life and dress in English town and country houses are almost as much fun as the spooky bits!
—Cathy
This anthology includes a number of spine tinglers from the nineteenth century. I really enjoy it because the stories are long enough to tell you a real story and establish a connection and engagement with the character and setting before introducing the supernatural element. This makes the reader more invested so that the fear exhibited by the characters is shared in a way that is sometimes absent in other collected works of "scary stories". I also appreciate this work because I love that stories that were scary in the 19th century are still enough to give me a chill. It reminds you how timeless literature is. I keep this by my bedside and read one story a night. This is sometimes a mistake. The first story scared me enough that I couldn't go to bed right away for fear it might produce a nightmare.
—Anne
