The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories Read Online Free Page A
Author: Michael Cox, R.A. Gilbert
Edith Wharton wrote a well-crafted body of ghost stories in the traditional style, whilst Mary E. Wilkins, whose 'The Shadows on the Wall' is reprinted here, fused traditional elements with strong local colour.
If its central characteristics remained immune to change, the ghost story did keep pace with the times through progressive modernization of settings and language. In Barry Pain's 'The Case of Vincent Pyrwhit' (1901), a message from beyond the grave is communicated via the telephone; elsewhere the motor car and other features of modern life are used to vivify stock situations. The magazines remained the chief purveyors of supernatural thrills to a mass public. In the 1860s and 1870s, the work of artists like J. A. Pasquier had occasionally been used to accompany magazine ghost stories; by the 1890s popular monthlies such as the Pall Mall Magazine (a particularly rich source of ghost stories), the Windsor Magazine, and The Strand had become profusely illustrated, an adjunct of doubtful use to a form so dependent upon the individual imagination. The secondary market for collections of ghost stories in book form was equally buoyant—as our Select Conspectus indicates (see p. 493). Ghost stories were being written by mainstream literary figures, such as Kipling and H. G. Wells; by specialists like Algernon Blackwood; and by large numbers of professional writers who combined writing ghost stories with other forms of fiction—E. F. Benson, W. W. Jacobs, Barry Pain, Robert Barr, amongst many others.
The real change in the traditional ghost story came with the upheaval of the First World War, making 1914 an appropriately symbolic termination-point for the Victorian ghost story. The stories written during the first decade of the new century, despite hints of growing uncertainties, remain undeniably fruit from the Victorian tree. In their tone, style, and thematic simplicity, Algernon Blackwood's story 'The Kit-bag' and Perceval Landon's 'Thurnley Abbey' (both 1908) could have been written fifty years earlier; and yet the sense of physical horror—intense in 'Thurnley Abbey'—strikes a new note and signals the end of the true Victorian style. After the Deluge of 1914 the ghost story withered for a time in the face of greater nightmares; but it was quickly to revive, and indeed achieved a second great flowering, with new themes, new modes of expression, and new images of supernatural violation. But that is itself another story.
Michael Cox
R. A. Gilbert
All Souls' Day, 1990
END NOTES
1 'De Juventute' (Cornhill Magazine, Aug. 1860).
2 'A Master of the Ghost Story', review of M. r. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, The Listener (29 Apr. 1931).
3 Introduction to Victorian Ghost Stories (1936), xvii.
4 Quoted by Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Cornhill Magazine (Jan. 1910).
5 The English Common Reader (1957), 363.
6 'A Christmas Tree', Extra Christmas Number of Household Words (1850).
7 The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant, ed. Elisabeth Jay (Oxford, 1990), 155.
8 'The Decay of the British Ghost', Longman's Magazine (Jan. 1884).
9 'A Physician's Ghosts',All the Year Round (6 Aug. 1859).
10 Prefatory note to Monsieur Maurice (1873).
11 Introduction to V. H. Collins (ed.), Ghosts and Marvels (Oxford, 1924), vii.
12 Prologue to J. S. Le Fanu, Madam Crowl's Ghost (1923), vii.
O, tell us a tale of a ghost! now do!
It's a capital time, for the fire burns blue.
Anon, 'The Vicarage Ghost',
Tinsleys 'Magazine (Christmas Number, 1868)
And she harbours a silent wrath against Providence for allowing the dead to walk and to molest the living.
SABINE BARING-GOULD, 'The Leaden Ring',
A Book of Gliosis (1904)
The Old Nurse's Story
ELIZABETH GASKELL
You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I dare say you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmorland, where I come from. I was just a girl in
If its central characteristics remained immune to change, the ghost story did keep pace with the times through progressive modernization of settings and language. In Barry Pain's 'The Case of Vincent Pyrwhit' (1901), a message from beyond the grave is communicated via the telephone; elsewhere the motor car and other features of modern life are used to vivify stock situations. The magazines remained the chief purveyors of supernatural thrills to a mass public. In the 1860s and 1870s, the work of artists like J. A. Pasquier had occasionally been used to accompany magazine ghost stories; by the 1890s popular monthlies such as the Pall Mall Magazine (a particularly rich source of ghost stories), the Windsor Magazine, and The Strand had become profusely illustrated, an adjunct of doubtful use to a form so dependent upon the individual imagination. The secondary market for collections of ghost stories in book form was equally buoyant—as our Select Conspectus indicates (see p. 493). Ghost stories were being written by mainstream literary figures, such as Kipling and H. G. Wells; by specialists like Algernon Blackwood; and by large numbers of professional writers who combined writing ghost stories with other forms of fiction—E. F. Benson, W. W. Jacobs, Barry Pain, Robert Barr, amongst many others.
The real change in the traditional ghost story came with the upheaval of the First World War, making 1914 an appropriately symbolic termination-point for the Victorian ghost story. The stories written during the first decade of the new century, despite hints of growing uncertainties, remain undeniably fruit from the Victorian tree. In their tone, style, and thematic simplicity, Algernon Blackwood's story 'The Kit-bag' and Perceval Landon's 'Thurnley Abbey' (both 1908) could have been written fifty years earlier; and yet the sense of physical horror—intense in 'Thurnley Abbey'—strikes a new note and signals the end of the true Victorian style. After the Deluge of 1914 the ghost story withered for a time in the face of greater nightmares; but it was quickly to revive, and indeed achieved a second great flowering, with new themes, new modes of expression, and new images of supernatural violation. But that is itself another story.
Michael Cox
R. A. Gilbert
All Souls' Day, 1990
END NOTES
1 'De Juventute' (Cornhill Magazine, Aug. 1860).
2 'A Master of the Ghost Story', review of M. r. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, The Listener (29 Apr. 1931).
3 Introduction to Victorian Ghost Stories (1936), xvii.
4 Quoted by Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Cornhill Magazine (Jan. 1910).
5 The English Common Reader (1957), 363.
6 'A Christmas Tree', Extra Christmas Number of Household Words (1850).
7 The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant, ed. Elisabeth Jay (Oxford, 1990), 155.
8 'The Decay of the British Ghost', Longman's Magazine (Jan. 1884).
9 'A Physician's Ghosts',All the Year Round (6 Aug. 1859).
10 Prefatory note to Monsieur Maurice (1873).
11 Introduction to V. H. Collins (ed.), Ghosts and Marvels (Oxford, 1924), vii.
12 Prologue to J. S. Le Fanu, Madam Crowl's Ghost (1923), vii.
O, tell us a tale of a ghost! now do!
It's a capital time, for the fire burns blue.
Anon, 'The Vicarage Ghost',
Tinsleys 'Magazine (Christmas Number, 1868)
And she harbours a silent wrath against Providence for allowing the dead to walk and to molest the living.
SABINE BARING-GOULD, 'The Leaden Ring',
A Book of Gliosis (1904)
The Old Nurse's Story
ELIZABETH GASKELL
You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I dare say you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmorland, where I come from. I was just a girl in
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