Victorian Ghost Stories

by Reggie Oliver (introduction)

The Victorian era brought an explosion of literature to the minds of the reading public with famous writers lending their talents to ghastly tales set in castles, mansions, lonely streets and long dark lanes.

A fantastic new companion for late-night scares as the nights draw in. Chilling ghost stories from the era of the fireside tale, a series of dark and foreboding missives from the masterful pens of Charles Dickens, E.F. Benson, Algernon Blackwood, Sabine Baring-Gould, Vernon Lee, Edith Nesbit and the master of all, M.R. James.

FLAME TREE 451 : From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic.

Genres: Horror, Anthologies

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2022

About the author

Reggie Oliver is a stage actor and playwright. His biography of Stella Gibbons was praised as “a triumph” by Hilary Spurling in the Daily Telegraph, his play Winner Takes All, was described as “the funniest evening in London”, by Michael Billington in The Guardian, and his adaptation of Hennequin and Delacour’s Once Bitten opened at the Orange Tree Theatre in London in December 2010.

He is the author of four highly-praised volumes of short fiction: The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini (Haunted River 2003), The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (Haunted River 2005), Masques of Satan (Ash Tree 2007), and Madder Mysteries (Ex Occidente 2009). His stories have appeared in over 25 anthologies and, for the third year running, one of his stories appears in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, the most widely read and popular of contemporary horror anthologies.

Reviews

[Mina Waldorf]

3.8
Quite pleasant

[Christy]

Good book to put you asleep at night. Half of the stories I appreciated the other half were quite boring.

[Irish_I_was_reading]

Tis spooky season, so time to read some spooky stuff!

This book is classified as Ghost Stories. This book is about ghost stories around Europe during the Victorian Age. The point of view changes throughout the chapters: S. Baring-Gould, E.F. Benson, Algernon Blackwood, Charles Dickens, Amelia B. Edwards, Elizabeth Gaskell, M.R. James, Jerome K. Jerome, Perceval Landon, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Vernon Lee, and Edith Nesbit.

[Rachel]

A lot of these stories were already included in many free collections I had found on Kobo and from the library...The ones I hadn't read were merely okay. I feel like some more work could've been done to find some less known stories for this collection.

[James Greening]

There are no better ghost stories than Victorian, in my humble opinion, and this features 12 of the best! A great collection to read during this spooky season!