Dread and Delight: A Century of Children's Ghost Stories

by Philippa Pearce (Editor)

As a genre, children's ghost writing is a relative newcomer to the literary field. While children's literature has flourished for over 200 years, supernatural fiction for the young has really only come into its own in the twentieth century. Dread and Delight , a spine-tingling collection of 40
ghost stories written for children over the course of the present century, charts its development from its roots in the writings of authors such as M. R. James, A. C. Benson and Walter de la Mare, to renowned modern authors including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jan Mark, Leon Garfield, and Penelope
Lively.
Compiled by the award-winning novelist Phillipa Pearce, author of the classic children's book Tom's Midnight Garden , these stories will captivate adults and children alike. Pearce includes two previously unpublished stories by Lucy Boston and Robert Westall, and a full introduction and lively
notes on the authors. The collected stories represent an engaging variety--drawn from all over the English-speaking world, including America, India, and the Caribbean as well as Great Britain. Treating the supernatural with humor and whimsy, as well as with a proper respect, the tales all succeed
brilliantly in creating an atmosphere of suspense or unease in order to produce the pleasurable tingle of anticipation that children relish as much as adults. As Phillip Pearce writes in her introduction, 'fear becomes awe and wonder...the delight is in the dread'.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published December 14, 1995

About the author

Philippa Pearce was an acclaimed English author of children’s literature, best remembered for her classic time-slip novel Tom’s Midnight Garden, which won the 1958 Carnegie Medal and remains a staple of British children’s fiction. Raised in Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire, in the Mill House by the River Cam, Pearce drew lifelong inspiration from her rural upbringing. Educated at the Perse School for Girls and Girton College, Cambridge, she studied English and History before working as a civil servant and later producing schools’ radio programmes for the BBC.
Her debut, Minnow on the Say (1955), inspired by local landscapes and a childhood canoe trip, was a Carnegie runner-up and later adapted for television. Tom’s Midnight Garden, also rooted in her childhood environment, became her most celebrated work, inspiring multiple adaptations for stage, screen, and television. Pearce went on to publish over thirty books, including A Dog So Small, The Squirrel Wife, The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, and The Way to Sattin Shore, with several earning further Carnegie commendations.
Married briefly to Martin Christie, with whom she had a daughter, Pearce returned to Great Shelford in 1973, where she lived until her death in 2006. Her legacy continues through the annual Philippa Pearce Lecture, celebrating excellence in children’s literature.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

First-class collection of literary ghost stories written for children and teens, most of which I had never read before (a big plus for me since I've read widely in the genre, and some new anthologies end up featuring mostly stories that aren't new to me). Well-chosen stories, plus excellent endnotes giving background about the author of each story.