Ghost stories

Ghost stories were something at which the Victorians excelled: a story set in the past, often in an old mansion, with a mystery and a supernatural spirit at its heart. The Gibson Library’s extensive collection of Victorian fiction includesa selection of Ghost Stories and popular novels, such as Wilkie Collins’ ‘The Woman In White’.

Still popular today are the ‘Antiquarian Ghost Stories’ of Cambridge Scholar Montague Rhodes James, whose uncanny stories have become a mainstay of Christmas. Besides the famous writers Charles Dickens, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and R. L. Stevenson, the collection includes stories by J. S. Le Fanu, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood. It also covers key women writers -Elizabeth Gaskell, M. E. Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, Mrs Henry Wood, Amelia B. Edwards, Charlotte Riddell, B. M. Croker, and E. Nesbit.