Description

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories edited by Tara Moore

Tradepaperback – Valancourt Books – Dec2016 – 291 pages

A lovely collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, culled from rare 19th-century periodicals.

During the Victorian era, it became traditional for publishers of newspapers and magazines to print ghost stories during the Christmas season for chilling winter reading by the fireside or candlelight. Now for the first time thirteen of these tales are collected here, including a wide range of stories from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten. Readers whose only previous experience with Victorian Christmas ghost stories has been Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” will be surprised and delighted at the astonishing variety of ghostly tales in this volume.

Contents:

Introduction by Tara Moore

The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott (The Keepsake 1828)

The Old Nurse’s story by Elizabeth Gaskell (Household Words 1852)

Horror: A True Tale by John Berwood Harwick (Blackwood’s Magazine January 1861)

“Bring Me a Light!”, Anonymous (Once a Week January 1861)

Old Hooker’s Ghost, Anonymous (Bentley’s Miscellany 1865)

The Ghost’s Summons by Ada Buisson (Belgravia January 1868)

Jack Layford’s Friend, Anonymous (Belgravia 1869)

How Peter Parley Laid a Ghost, Anonymous (Christmas Annual 1875)

A Mysterious Visitor by Ellen Wood (Bentley’s Miscellany 1857)

The Haunted Rock by W. W. Fenn (Illustrated London News 1881)

The Lady’s Walk by Margaret Oliphant (Longman’s Magazine December 1882 and January 1883)

The Captain of the Pole-Star by Arthur Conan Doyle (Temple Bar January 1883)

The Doll’s Ghost by F. Marion Crawford (Illustrated London News Christmas 1896)