Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story

by Julia Briggs

Why were so many ghost stories published between 1850 and 1930? Why were readers so eager to be scared, and why did such writers as Dickens, Stevenson, Kipling and Henry James find artistic satisfaction in writing them? "Night Visitors" explores these questions, looking for explanations in the underlying anxieties of the age, as well as of the individual writers. The mysterious and unknown capacities of the mind, the duality of the soul, the nineties obsession with diabolism, the dangers of science, mesmerism, and drugs, were all recurrent themes, dramatized in supernatural tales such as "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray", and "The Turn of the Screw". Contributions were also made by writers whose reputations rest exclusively on their ghost stories, among them Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and M.R. James. Beginning with a summary history of the ghost story up to the mid-nineteenth century, "Night Visitors" goes on to provide a more detailed account from the 1880s up to the First World War, the impact of which, coinciding with Freud's radical explorations of inner fears, helped to send the ghost story into decline. Walter de la Mare was to be its last and greatest exponent. The book ends with an epilogue on ghosts in the work of Hardy, Yeats and Eliot.

Genres: Nonfiction, Ghosts, Gothic

238 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1977

About the author

Julia Briggs was a writer and critic of great talents, a gifted scholar and a profoundly generous teacher who pioneered the study of children's literature and of women's writing in universities. Deeply humanist in outlook, she had an abiding belief in the value of literary study and in the power of education to transform lives.

Julia Ballam grew up in London. Her father, Harry, worked in advertising, but also tried his hand at writing. Her mother, Trudi, had been a commercial artist. Julia attended South Hampstead high school and in 1963 won a scholarship to study English at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Beautiful and brilliant, she also became pregnant at the end of her first year and was, she believed, the first female undergraduate not to be instantly expelled. She married the father, Peter Gold, and stayed on to give birth to her son and take a first-class degree. The marriage was short-lived, and in 1969 she married Robin Briggs, historian and fellow of All Souls College, with whom she had two more sons. They were divorced in 1989.

Julia always followed her literary instincts. At Oxford, while bringing up her family, she wrote a BLitt thesis on the English ghost story - not considered a proper subject for a doctorate - which became Night Visitors (1977), her first book. From 1978 she took up a permanent post as fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. In 1983 she published This Stage Play World: Texts and Contexts 1580-1625, revised in 1997 and still in use by students. She then devoted herself to finishing Donald Crompton's book on William Golding, A View from the Spire (1985), after he died. In 1987 she published a life of the children's writer and Fabian socialist, E Nesbit, A Woman of Passion, which contributed to the emerging study of children's literature, as did Children and Their Books: a Celebration of the Work of Iona and Peter Opie (1989), co-edited with Gillian Avery.

Very active in the Oxford English faculty, which she also chaired, Julia canvassed successfully for courses on women's writing. As general editor of the Penguin paperback re-issue of Virginia Woolf's work, when it came out of copyright in 1991, she oversaw the reprinting of 13 volumes, with introductions by renowned women scholars from Britain and the US, some of whom required delicate handling. She died aged 63 of a brain tumour.

Reviews

[Murray Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1977, Briggs’s study of the English ghost story starts with something of a misstep. Blurring the boundaries by treating the term ghost story ‘with something of the latitude that characterises the general usage, since it can denote not only stories about ghosts, but about possession and demonic bargains, spirits other than those of the dead, including ghouls, vampires, werewolves’, Briggs goes on to declare the ghost story a dead form: ‘a vehicle for nostalgia, a formulaic exercise content merely to recreate a Dickensian or Monty Jamesian atmosphere’. Besides missing the irony of ever declaring a ghost dead, this misses the fact that the 1970s saw a massive horror boom — mostly, yes, driven by an American author, Stephen King, but including some Brits, too, such as James Herbert and Ramsey Campbell — which not only brought ‘ghouls, vampires, werewolves’ to the fore again, but a good number of ghosts, too. (Ramsey Campbell’s The Influence being one of my favourites.)

What Briggs does do, here, though, is follow the ghost story through a difficult transition period, after which the ghost story (in the strictest sense) really did seem to have reached a point of exhaustion, when the more literary use of the ghost to explore aberrant or awry psychology was ousted by Freud’s theories — which allowed the irrational to be treated directly, rather than only metaphorically — and then ended entirely by the very real horrors of the Great War. But Briggs, who’s best when looking in depth at individual works or writers, nevertheless finds writers who use ghosts or the supernatural in their own personal way even after this: Elizabeth Bowen, for instance, whose 1945 collection The Demon Lover ‘reveals her ghosts as somehow necessary to their victims, occupying spiritual voids left by the shock of war’, or Walter de la Mare. (If she’d mentioned Robert Aickman, it could well have destroyed her argument about the death of the ghost story, in its broadest sense, altogether.)

Still, an interesting read, written at a time when such stories weren’t accorded much academic attention.

[Martine Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this perceptive analysis of the history of the ghost story, not only for its insights into lots of my favourite chillers, but as another reviewer says, it offers huge encouragement to get onto Project Gutenberg and seek out long forgotten examples of the ghost story. In some ways this is a developmental history of the genre, from the re-tellings of folk tales of Stevenson and Scott, through the fashions for decadence and hallucinogenics, to the restrained psychological tales of the 20th century. My favourite chapters were those on the two Jameses (how coincidental is it, that two of the greatest proponents share a surname?) Henry James, was of course a master of atmosphere, of the shadowy English twilight, while M R James achieved menacing, terrifying effects in short and crisp prose. A thrilling discovery was the bounty of Kipling’s early stories, particularly those malaria inspired tales written in India when a clerk, as the colonial experience is one that seems to lend itself particularly to hauntings. Walter de la Mare has always struck me as a deeply underrated writer, so an analysis of his ghost stories was well overdue. In fact there are dozens of little gems, from Hawthorne and Vernon Lee to Thomas Hardy’s poems and offerings from Yeats and Eliot.
Unfortunately this book is now so rare and expensive that I could only obtain it from a library. However, I would dearly love to possess it and photocopied my favourite pages. I’ll leave you with a stanza from Kipling that sums up the mood of the book, that I copied out (from ‘The House of Suddhoo’):
‘A stones’s throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
Shall bear us company tonight,
For we have reached the Oldest Land,
Wherein the Powers of Darkness Range.'

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful guide book to the English ghost story.

I was telling one of my friends while reading this book I was going download crazy.

When I was younger it was hard to find many of the authors listed in this book. Now that many of the stories are in the public domain, I can finally read some of them.

I read this book on a reccomendation from a goodreads friend, and I'm very glad that I read the book.

I have found a whole new group of authors to look for once again. The main one is F. W. Harvey. As a child I remember watching films based on some of his stories.

I guess now I'm going to go worldcat crazy trying to find some of the authors and tittles.

[Ben Lovegrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am one of the few lucky people to own this out of print book which is extremely rare and expensive to obtain. It is the definitive work on the English ghost story and is surprisingly readable (it starts with a reference to the popular television programme Doctor Who). Julia Briggs appears in interviews on the extras of a BBC DVD of M R James' Casting the Runes - a fascinating documentary worth seeking out even if you can't get this book. It really deserves a reprint though.

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is tremendously fresh and interesting. I had it on my shelf for about 10 years, but never read it (to my shame), and I've only now found out that it's quite rare. I bought it for very little at an eccentric book shop in Crystal Palace, situated in the cellar of an old warehouse. That place always had such an intriguing mass of dusty old books... but I digress (I feel as though I may launch into an M.R. James pastiche). Although much of Briggs's analysis may be familiar to lovers of ghost stories and their history, it's all expressed in a marvellously succinct fashion. I commend Briggs deeply for giving serious attention to varieties of fiction which, at that time, were rarely given it.

[Roger O · Rating 3 out of 5]

incredibly well researched but a bit dense and repetitive at points

[Mengxing Fu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently her favorites are Henry James and Le Fanu.

[Sophie Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great non fiction criticism, perfect if you’re studying the ghost story!! for those looking to own a copy of this rare book, i’m selling one on depop, my username is @sophcrich :)