The Ghost Stories of Wilkie Collins by Wilkie Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It is always hard to evaluate a book of short stories of varying quality, not least ghost stories, a genre that sets itself an almost impossible task, to have us believing the unbelievable.

I enjoyed these adventures for their historical content – a Victorian provenance invariably takes you on a journey you have never before travelled – though I can’t say I was wowed by any of the mysteries or their veiled resolutions.

That noted, there is something more plausible about a ghost story set in an era when folk routinely believed in the supernatural – rather like A Christmas Carol by Dickens, where you can suspend disbelief because the characters don’t suffer any themselves.

I have recently read The Woman in White and am currently working my way through The Moonstone – these being two of Wilkie Collins’ most celebrated full-length epics, and his ghost stories add a little more insight into his thinking, and colour to his canon.




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