Customer Reviews

The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories

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This book was published in 1984 and contained 33 short stories by as many writers. The pieces ranged from 1810 to the 1980s, with the majority from the 1890s to 1960s. Nearly two-thirds of the stories in the book were from the 20th century.

For the editor, a ghost story contained a spirit of one or more persons showing itself or seeming to do so, haunting a place, person or thing. For some reason, poltergeists were excluded. The greatest works were those that went beyond entertainment to explore states of consciousness, examine appearance and reality, the meaning of existence and the dark side of the mind.

As with The Penguin Book of Horror Stories, a companion volume by the same editor, the preference was for a blend of classics, lesser-known writers mainly from Great Britain, and an avoidance of modern SF and other contemporary writers seen by the editor as crude or obvious. As he'd said about horror stories, the editor claimed that the vast majority of ghost stories in modern Western literature came from English, and that most of them were by British writers.

There were 20 writers in the collection from Great Britain, 4 from the U.S., 3 each from France and Germany, and 1 each from Ireland, Russia and Italy. Ten of the authors were women. From the early to mid-1800s, there were Kleist, Hoffmann, Pushkin, Walter Scott, Elizabeth Gaskell and Margaret Oliphant.

From the late 19th century up through World War II, there were LeFanu, Maupassant, Zola, Mann, Henry James, Bierce, Wharton, Kipling, Wells, Blackwell, M. R. James, Benson and Bradbury. Lesser-known writers from this period included Ann Bridge and A. M. Burrage.

Those after World War II included Muriel Spark, Penelope Fitzgerald and A. S. Byatt. Among the others were Marghanita Laski, Fielden Hughes, Elizabeth Walter, George Mackay Brown, Alain Danielou and Mario Soldati.

In a lengthy introduction to the tales, the editor surveyed antecedents in Roman literature, the Bible, historical records and oral tales of the Middle Ages, Chaucer, Froissart, the Tudor and Jacobean dramatists, ballads, folklore, Defoe, and English and German Gothic writers. The early modern ghost stories in Europe were fictional creations by Kleist and Hoffmann in the early 1800s: to the conventional depiction of a haunted place, they added a sense of the past, artful descriptions of customs, characters and social relations, the buildup of a sinister atmosphere and an ironic tone.

Later works by Irving, Poe, Pushkin, Dickens, LeFanu and others brought the genre to the 1870s, by which time it had been fully established. By then, it was "almost as if [ghost stories] were beginning to fulfill a kind of spiritual need; as if the possibility of ghosts was a reassurance of an after-life." For the editor, the great authors in the field were LeFanu, Henry James, De La Mare and M. R. James; he saw no contemporary writer to rival their achievement.

The classic pieces in the collection included "The Queen of Spades," "The Horla," "The Moonlit Road," "The Room in the Tower," and maybe "Mr. Justice Harbottle" and "Afterward." These were among the most impressive for this reader. "The Queen of Spades" by Pushkin told a ghost story and poked fun at the nobility and human greed. "The Moonlit Road" by Bierce described a series of tragic events from multiple, conflicting points of view; it may well have been one of the inspirations behind Akutagawa's "In a Grove," filmed later as Rashomon. "The Room in the Tower" by Benson described a sinister dream and suggested dreadful inevitability in ways that can't easily be forgotten.

Of the others, "The Buick Saloon" by Ann Bridge was an ironic tale set in Peking among the British community. "Angeline or the Haunted House" by Zola, described as that author's only ghost story, described the conflicting rumors behind the creation of a haunting. "The Open Door" by Margaret Oliphant, written in the 1860s, was notable for including a rare demonstration of religious faith confident in the face of a haunting, as well as a sort of exorcism. "Footsteps in the Snow" by Soldati, in which a man recalled a lost love, was both funny and sad. "The Axe" by Fitzgerald was set in the modern business world and depicted the familiar case of a devoted worker who got the boot. Many of the other stories, though, were fairly tame.

Among the authors absent from the anthology: Robert Aickman, William Sansom and Vernon Lee. It was surprising to see Poe omitted from a horror anthology, but the editor claimed that Poe was somewhat overrated despite his influence, and that his best stories had to do with horror and suspense, not ghosts.

Other large anthologies of horror fiction include The Supernatural Omnibus (1931), A Century of Creepy Stories (1934), A Second Century of Creepy Stories (1937), Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944), Dark Forces (1980), The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981), The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (1984), Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (1985), The Dark Descent (1987), The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (1989), The Mammoth Book of Terror (1991), The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1991), Final Shadows (1991), Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown (1993), The Oxford Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1996), The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (2003), The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (2005), The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (2007), American Supernatural Tales (2007) and The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (2008).

Smaller volumes include The Ghost Book (1926), Great Ghost Stories (1930), Great Tales of Horror (1933), Best Ghost Stories (1945), The Second Ghost Book (1952), The Third Ghost Book (1955), The Supernatural in the English Short Story (1959), The Pan Book of Horror Stories, Vols. 1-30 (1959-88), The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Vols. 1-20 (1964-84), The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, Vols. 1-17 (1966-84), The Thrill of Horror: 22 Terrifying Tales (1975), Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1984), Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror (1997) and Haunted Houses: The Greatest Stories (1997).

In this volume JA Cuddon brings together 33 classic ghost stories ranging from the dark and Gothic to the spine chilling and eery, as spine-chilling and eery as well as the witty and irreverent, and the poignant and sad.Some begin in a ghostly and eerie fashion, and in others you only realize there is a ghost at the end.
In Angeline, Or the Haunted House, By Emil Zola, we actually discover an innocent explanation of love renewed while My Adventure in Norfolk by AJ Alan, leave us to discover that the people we thought were alive were ghosts.
some of the stories involve ghosts taking revenge on those who have treated them cruelly or caused their deaths years before, such as The Old Nurses Story by Elizabeth Gaskill, or Sir Edward Orme by Henry James.
some are more poignant than frightening, such as the July Ghost by AS Byatt, but all are great reading and all have some twist or surprise.



Ghost stories included here range from those written in 1810 to 1981, and set in Italy, Germany, Scotland, England, Wales, Russia, France, the United States and India.

My favourites include The Beggarwoman of Locarno, the eerie The Entail, the twister The Queen of Spades, The heartbreaking The Old Nurse's Story, the spine chilling La Horla, the mystery of The Open door by Margaret Oliphant, the beautiful Angeline, My Adventure in Norfolk and the poignant and heartfelt The July Ghost.
All of these are classic and engaging stories about ghosts and the supernatural.