A Gathering Darkness
Thirteen Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories that send chills up the spine and create an atmosphere sure to make the reader turn on an extra light and push up the back of their armchair against the wall.

Set amidst crumbling, ill-maintained churches and imposing cathedrals, on desolate coastland, moors and marshes, even along unlit roads extending into the new suburbs of London, the stories have been chosen for their quality of writing, imaginative range and diversity of character. Here you will find strange, preoccupied gentleman farmers; scholars and antiquarians; administrators of the British Raj; cowering country girls drafted into service in leaky mansions; cussed, gnarled servants and remorseful clergymen; frustrated aristocrats, and their puzzled American cousins; crooked jurists, desperate children and modern women emancipated in ways they never imagined.

The stories, in short, are the quintessence of nineteenth century literature, except for that one small, and unexamined, crack in its magnificent window pane.

From Edith Nesbit and MR James to Wilkie Collins and WW Jacobs, late Victorian and Edwardian writers lived through a time of unparalleled change, and unprecedented challenge--but also produced some of the finest ghost stories ever written. This collection explores the many dimensions of that rapidly-shifting world: a university curator's annoyance at receiving an uninteresting picture turns to terror when it proves far more interesting than he first imagined; the wife of a colonial administrator experiences the unexpected consequences of love which endures death; a mill family makes nervous use of an Indian talisman offering the solution to any problem, at a price.

In these thirteen classic stories of the supernatural nothing is taken for granted except, perhaps, for fear.

Table of Contents
1. MR James, The Mezzotint
2. Charlotte Riddell, Nut Bush Farm
3. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Shadow in the Corner
4. John Kendrick Bangs, The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
5. Wilkie Collins, Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman
6. Alice Perrin, The Summoning of Arnold
7. Edith Nesbit, John Charrington's Wedding
8. WF Harvey, Across the Moors
9. DH Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
10. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Mr Justice Harbottle
11. Wallace Irwin, The Transplanted Ghost
12. WW Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw
13. May Sinclair, Where their Fire Is Not Quenched
Afterword: MR James, Stories I Have Tried to Write: Thoughts and Observations on the Writing of Ghost Stories
"1126566408"
A Gathering Darkness
Thirteen Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories that send chills up the spine and create an atmosphere sure to make the reader turn on an extra light and push up the back of their armchair against the wall.

Set amidst crumbling, ill-maintained churches and imposing cathedrals, on desolate coastland, moors and marshes, even along unlit roads extending into the new suburbs of London, the stories have been chosen for their quality of writing, imaginative range and diversity of character. Here you will find strange, preoccupied gentleman farmers; scholars and antiquarians; administrators of the British Raj; cowering country girls drafted into service in leaky mansions; cussed, gnarled servants and remorseful clergymen; frustrated aristocrats, and their puzzled American cousins; crooked jurists, desperate children and modern women emancipated in ways they never imagined.

The stories, in short, are the quintessence of nineteenth century literature, except for that one small, and unexamined, crack in its magnificent window pane.

From Edith Nesbit and MR James to Wilkie Collins and WW Jacobs, late Victorian and Edwardian writers lived through a time of unparalleled change, and unprecedented challenge--but also produced some of the finest ghost stories ever written. This collection explores the many dimensions of that rapidly-shifting world: a university curator's annoyance at receiving an uninteresting picture turns to terror when it proves far more interesting than he first imagined; the wife of a colonial administrator experiences the unexpected consequences of love which endures death; a mill family makes nervous use of an Indian talisman offering the solution to any problem, at a price.

In these thirteen classic stories of the supernatural nothing is taken for granted except, perhaps, for fear.

Table of Contents
1. MR James, The Mezzotint
2. Charlotte Riddell, Nut Bush Farm
3. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Shadow in the Corner
4. John Kendrick Bangs, The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
5. Wilkie Collins, Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman
6. Alice Perrin, The Summoning of Arnold
7. Edith Nesbit, John Charrington's Wedding
8. WF Harvey, Across the Moors
9. DH Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
10. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Mr Justice Harbottle
11. Wallace Irwin, The Transplanted Ghost
12. WW Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw
13. May Sinclair, Where their Fire Is Not Quenched
Afterword: MR James, Stories I Have Tried to Write: Thoughts and Observations on the Writing of Ghost Stories
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Overview

Thirteen Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories that send chills up the spine and create an atmosphere sure to make the reader turn on an extra light and push up the back of their armchair against the wall.

Set amidst crumbling, ill-maintained churches and imposing cathedrals, on desolate coastland, moors and marshes, even along unlit roads extending into the new suburbs of London, the stories have been chosen for their quality of writing, imaginative range and diversity of character. Here you will find strange, preoccupied gentleman farmers; scholars and antiquarians; administrators of the British Raj; cowering country girls drafted into service in leaky mansions; cussed, gnarled servants and remorseful clergymen; frustrated aristocrats, and their puzzled American cousins; crooked jurists, desperate children and modern women emancipated in ways they never imagined.

The stories, in short, are the quintessence of nineteenth century literature, except for that one small, and unexamined, crack in its magnificent window pane.

From Edith Nesbit and MR James to Wilkie Collins and WW Jacobs, late Victorian and Edwardian writers lived through a time of unparalleled change, and unprecedented challenge--but also produced some of the finest ghost stories ever written. This collection explores the many dimensions of that rapidly-shifting world: a university curator's annoyance at receiving an uninteresting picture turns to terror when it proves far more interesting than he first imagined; the wife of a colonial administrator experiences the unexpected consequences of love which endures death; a mill family makes nervous use of an Indian talisman offering the solution to any problem, at a price.

In these thirteen classic stories of the supernatural nothing is taken for granted except, perhaps, for fear.

Table of Contents
1. MR James, The Mezzotint
2. Charlotte Riddell, Nut Bush Farm
3. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Shadow in the Corner
4. John Kendrick Bangs, The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
5. Wilkie Collins, Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman
6. Alice Perrin, The Summoning of Arnold
7. Edith Nesbit, John Charrington's Wedding
8. WF Harvey, Across the Moors
9. DH Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
10. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Mr Justice Harbottle
11. Wallace Irwin, The Transplanted Ghost
12. WW Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw
13. May Sinclair, Where their Fire Is Not Quenched
Afterword: MR James, Stories I Have Tried to Write: Thoughts and Observations on the Writing of Ghost Stories

Product Details

BN ID: 2940157199739
Publisher: Palamedes Publishing
Publication date: 06/13/2017
Series: Palamedes Classic , #1
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Sales rank: 933,979
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

About The Author
John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922) was a satirical writer and editor of several prominent American publications, including Harper’s Weekly and Puck. ‘The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall’ is taken from his 1894 short story collection, The Water Ghost, and Others.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was the author of more than 90 novels and 150 stories. Her work frequently deployed an earlier Gothic sensibility in the ordinary situations of Victorian life. ‘The Shadow in the Corner’ was published in the July 1879 issue of All the Year Round, the periodical founded by Charles Dickens and edited at the time of the story’s appearance by his son, Charles Culliford Boz Dickens.

Wilkie Collins (William Wilkie Collins, 1824-1889) was the author of 30 novels and more than 100 shorter prose pieces. A friend of Dickens and frequent contributor to his journals Household Words and All the Year Round, he is best known for the novels The Woman in White (often regarded as a progenitor of the detective genre) and The Moonstone. ‘Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman’ appeared in his 1887 collection, Little Novels.

W.F. Harvey (William Fryer Harvey, 1885-1937) wrote many stories of mystery and the uncanny. Though a Quaker, he served as a Royal Navy surgeon in World War I. ‘Across the Moors’ was published in the 1910 collection, Midnight House and Other Tales.

Wallace Irwin (1879-1959) wrote in a huge variety of forms, from short fiction, sketches and lyrics to screenplays, journalism and sonnets. His ‘Togo’ series of satirical Japanese letters was hugely popular (if politically incorrect). ‘The Transplanted Ghost’ (1911) appeared in the 1921 US anthology The Humorous Ghost.

James Roderick Burns was born in Stockton-on-Tees, north east England, in 1972. Educated at Balliol College and the State University of New York, he completed a PhD on the representation of industry in Victorian fiction and film in 1999. His short-form collections The Salesman’s Shoes and Greetings from Luna Park are published by Modern English Tanka Press. In 2009, he graduated with distinction from the MSt in Creative Writing programme at Oxford University, and is currently completing a novel on the life of the nineteenth-century New York anti-vice campaigner, Anthony Comstock. He is managing editor of the UK journal Other Poetry and lives with his wife and daughter in Edinburgh.

Date of Birth:

September 11, 1885

Date of Death:

March 2, 1930

Place of Birth:

Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England

Place of Death:

Vence, France

Education:

Nottingham University College, teacher training certificate, 1908
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