Victorian Ghost Story

Andrew Smith is Professor of Nineteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Sheffield, where he co-directs the Centre for the History of the Gothic. He is the author or editor of twenty-six published books including Dickens and the Gothic (2024), Gothic Fiction and the Writing of Trauma, 1914-1934: The Ghosts of World War One (2022; winner of the Allan Lloyd Smith prize), Gothic Death 1740-1914: A Literary History (2016), The Ghost Story 1840-1920: A Cultural History (2010), Gothic Literature (2007; revised 2013), Victorian Demons (2004) and Gothic Radicalism (2000).

Charles Dickens famously complained that "ghosts...'walk' in a beaten track". This fascinating collection of specially commissioned essays, by specialists in the field, proves conclusively that in Victorian fiction ghosts spent most of their time off the beaten track, making the invisible visible and in the process often challenging the repressions of the status quo. The Victorian Ghost Story is bound to haunt its readers for a long time to come.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Victorian GhostsAndrew SmithPART I. HISTORICAL CONTEXTS1. Gothic Fiction, Romanticism and the Origins of the Nineteenth-Century Ghost Story: 1764–1832Dale Townshend2. The Ghost Story: 1830–70Anthony Mandal3. The Ghost Story, 1870–1900Nick Freeman4. Neo-Victorian Unquiet Spirits: Encounters with Nineteenth-Century GhostsMarie-Luise Kohlke PART II. CRITICAL CONTEXTS5. EconomicsAndrew Smith6. Ghostly Machines and Mechanical Ghosts: Industrialisation and Victorian HauntingBridget M. Marshall7. The Ghost Story as Written by Victorian Women WritersLucie Armitt8. The Victorian Ghost Story and ColonialismMelissa Edmundson9. ReligionAlison Milbank10. The Victorian American Ghost StoryJeffrey Andrew Weinstock11. Victorian Christmas GhostsTara MoorePART III. AUTHORS12. Charles DickensScott Brewster13. Rudyard KiplingMinna Vuohelainen14. J. Sheridan Le FanuWilliam Hughes15. Margaret OliphantValerie Sanders16. Charlotte RiddellHelena Ifill17. Vernon LeeArdel Haefele-Thomas18. Henry JamesLuke Thurston19. M. R. JamesRoger Luckhurst PART IV. PLACES20. Haunted LandscapesEmma McEvoy21. Maritime Ghost StoriesJoan Passey22. The Victorian Haunted HouseEmma Liggins23. Haunted Libraries and MuseumsDarryl Jones24. PyramidsAndrew Smith Notes on ContributorsIndex