The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (Oxford Books of Prose & Verse) (Oxford Books of Prose & Verse)

by Michael Cox (Editor), Michael Cox (Editor), R. A. Gilbert (Primary Contributor)

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $15.68

  The thrill and chill of the ghost story is displayed in all its variety and vitality through this marvellous anthology. Ranging from the early 19th century to the 1960s, the collection reveals the development of the genre, and showcases many of its greatest expositors - from Sir Walter Scott, H. G. Wells, M. R. James, T. H. White, Walter de la Mare, and Elizabeth Bowen in the UK to Edith Wharton in America. Though its heyday coincided with the golden age of Empire in the nineteenth century, the ghost story enjoyed a second flowering between the two World Wars and its popularity is as great as ever.

• Used

  Paperback
  1989

  $4.23

  This selection of 42 stories written between 1829 and 1981 presents the full range of the English tradition of literary ghost fiction by demonstrating its historical development as well as its major themes and characteristics. It combines a serious literary purpose with the intention of arousing fear at the doings of the dead and the important contribution of women writers is indicated by the eight stories included, from Amelia Edward's The Phantom Ghost to Elizabeth Bowen's Hand in Glove . The fictional ghost story is dominated by English authors, from J.S.Le Fanu and M.R.James to Walter de la Mare and Robert Aickman, and by American authors, such as Edith Wharton, writing in the English tradition.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1986

  $6.91

  With their evocative settings amid mists and shadows, in ruinous houses, on lonely roads and wild moorlands, in abandoned churches and over-grown gardens, ghost stories have long exercised a universal fascination. Here at last is an anthology of some of the very best English ghost stories which combines a serious literary purpose with the plain intention of arousing a pleasurable fear at the doings of the dead. This selection of forty-two stories, written between 1829 and 1968, is the first to present the full range and vitality of the ghost fiction tradition by demonstrating its historical development as well as its major themes and characteristics. It includes stories by Walter Scott, M. R. James, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, Somerset Maugham and T. H. White. Elizabeth Bowen suggested that the ghost story works through a series of happenings whose horror lies in their being just, just, out of time, and the success of a story may be judged by what Edith Wharton called its thermometrical quality; if it sends a cold shiver down the spine, it has done its job and done it well. The challenge of this most demanding form has been taken up by a host of writers, both 'specialists' like J. S. Le Fanu and Algernon Blackwood, and those, such as Henry James and H. G. Wells, for whom ghost stories were only a part of their literary output. Nor does this collection overlook the important contribution of women writers, with eight stories included from Amelia Edward's The Phantom Ghost (1864) to Elizabeth Bowen's Hand in Glove (1952).