THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH GHOST STORIES - Chosen by - MICHAEL COX & R.A. GILBERT 1993

The book in a fair good condition.

“Ghost stories have long exercised a universal fascination but the literary ghost story, as opposed to the tales of oral tradition, is of relatively recent origin, dating only from the early decades of the nineteenth century. This selection of forty-two stories written between 1829 and 1968 is the first to present the full range and vitality of the English tradition of ghost fiction by demonstrating its historical development as well as its major themes and characteristics. 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. 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 even now still attracts dedicated practitioners and readers.

L. P. Hartley described the genre as 'the most exacting form of literary art'. The challenge of succeeding in a form that is so conservative in its preoccupations and yet so amenable to innovation and ingenuity, and that also demands a high degree of technical skill, has been taken up by a host or writers, both 'specialists' like Algernon Blackwood and H. Russell Wakefield, and those, such as Henry James and A. E. Coppard, for whom ghost stories formed only a part of their literary output. The important contribution of women writers is indicated by the eight stories included here, from Amelia Edwards's 'The Phantom Coach' (1864) to Elizabeth Bowen's 'Hand in Glove' (1952).

As the editors stress in their informative introduction, a good ghost story, though it may raise many profound questions about life and death, entertains as much as it unsettles us, and the best writers are careful to satisfy what Virginia Woolf called 'the strange human craving for the pleasure of feeling afraid'. This anthology of some of the very best English ghost stories similarly combines a serious literary purpose with the plain intention of arousing pleasing fear at the doings of the dead.“

This edition published 1992 by BCA by arrangement with Oxford University Press

CN 9197

EAN 0000000091978

Long 20.2 cm

Width 13.5 cm

High 4.2

Weight 577 g

Pages 504