Ghost Stories (Collector's Library)

by Charles Dickens (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $4.10

  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.

• Used

  Paperback
  1985

  $3.25

• New

  Paperback
  1997

  $6.77

  Interest in supernatural phenomena was high during Charles Dickens' lifetime. He had always loved a good ghost story himself, particularly at Christmas time, and was open-minded, willing to accept, and indeed put to the test, the existence of spirits. His natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twenty stories presented here, which include his celebrated A Christmas Carol, the full range of his gothic talents can be seen. Chilling as some of these stories are, Dickens has managed to inject characteristically grotesque comedy as he writes of revenge, insanity, pre-cognition and dream visions, he indulges also in some debunking of contemporary credulity.