Ghost Stories (Collector's Library) - Hardcover

Charles Dickens' fascination with ghosts and the macabre is traced to his childhood, to the grim and ghoulish stories told him by his nursemaid, Mary Weller, whom he referred to as Mercy, 'though she had none on me'. Along with the horrors of the 'penny dreadful' magazine, The Terrific Register - a publication which made Dickens 'unspeakably miserable and frightened the very wits out of my head' - the stories recounted by Weller were so powerful as to colour Dickens' imagination and shape much of the enduring fiction he created. This collection brings together all Dickens' ghost stories - twenty in all - including several long tales. Here are chilling histories of coincidence, insanity and revenge. Illustrated by various artists, with an Afterword by David Stuart Davies.

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth, where his father worked as a clerk. Living in London in 1824, Dickens was sent by his family to work in a blacking-warehouse, and his father was arrested and imprisoned for debt. Fortunes improved and Dickens returned to school, eventually becoming a parliamentary reporter. His first piece of fiction was published by a magazine in December 1832, and by 1836 he had begun his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. He focused his career on writing, completing fourteen highly successful novels, as well as penning journalism, shorter fiction and travel books. He died in 1870.