Book Description

There's nothing like a good ghost story to give you a frisson of fear on a dark winter's night. Gathered in this haunting collection are twenty-seven of the very best of their genre by British and American masters. As well as contributions from established names, you will also find forgotten gems by unjustly neglected writers who deserve an opportunity to find a new readership. Among these is The Spectre of Tappington, taken from The Ingoldsby Legends which appeared in serial form in the 1830s and were immensely popular with Victorian readers. Their author, Thomas Ingoldsby, was in fact an English clergyman, Richard Barham, who, unlike most of the writers in this compilation, put pen to paper out of pure enjoyment rather than necessity. The name Edith Nesbit is better known to modern readers than Thomas Ingoldsby, although probably not in the context of adult fiction. Famous as a writer of children's fiction (most notably The Railway Children), she also had a talent for ghost stories, as you will discover when you come to Man-Size in Marble. So settle back and enjoy myriad journeys through the highways and byways of one of literature's most rewarding genres. Included here are: The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman by Wilkie Collins The Captain of the Pole-star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton by Charles Dickens The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Furnished Room by O. Henry The Haunted Mill by Jerome K. Jerome A Ghost by Guy de Maupassant The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson The Devil's Wage by W. M. Thackeray The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde