The Essential Victorian Ghost Stories: Annotated and Illustrated: Classic Tales of Murder, Mystery, Horror & Hauntings

Ghostly coaches shuttle the mildewed cadavers of its ill-fated occupants; a young orphan is lured to a frosty death by a pale, little girl with a mangled shoulder; a nerve-wracked man spends the night in a room with a fatal past; a restless playboy has a shocking vision of his girlfriend ravished in her boudoir, with her throat cut; a beautiful woman is sold by her uncle to a wealthy corpse living beneath a church...

These are the images that haunted their authors' brains during the Victorian Era... As industrial Britain steamed away from its feudal-agrarian past, a sense of self-deceit and insecurity - a lingering of violent potential and national shame - pervaded the collective unconscious of the world's preeminent empire. This psychological malaise manifested itself in the classic ghost story, which saw its golden era in the Victorian Age. The unsettling works of Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker, H. G. Wells, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, W. W. Jacobs, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edith Nesbit, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Marion Crawford, Henry James, M. R. James, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Elizabeth Gaskell, Rhoda Broughton, Amelia B. Edwards, and Margaret Oliphant grace this brief homage to that unique literary era of elegance, mystique, and horror.

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)