The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories

by Michael Cox

This selection of 42 stories written between 1829 and 1968 is the first to present the full range and vitality of the English tradition of literary ghost fiction by demonstrating its historical development as well as its major themes and characteristics. The fictional ghost story is demonstrated by English authors, from J. S. Le Fanu and M. R. James to Walter de la Mare and Robert Aickman, and by American authors such as Edith Wharton, writing in the English tradition. Though its heyday coincided with the golden age of Empire in the nineteenth century, the ghost story enjoyed a second flowering between the two World Wars and even now still attracts dedicated practitioners and readers.

Review from previous edition "handsome Oxford collection of spooks...plenty of flesh-creeping matter here" The Times
"The perfect book for long winter evenings of drawn curtains and flickering firelight." Books and Bookmen
"an excellent cross-section of familiar and unfamiliar stories" New Statesman


Review from previous edition "handsome Oxford collection of spooks...plenty of flesh-creeping matter here" The Times
"The perfect book for long winter evenings of drawn curtains and flickering firelight." Books and Bookmen
"an excellent cross-section of familiar and unfamiliar stories" New Statesman

Review from previous edition "handsome Oxford collection of spooks...plenty of flesh-creeping matter here" The Times
"The perfect book for long winter evenings of drawn curtains and flickering firelight." Books and Bookmen
"an excellent cross-section of familiar and unfamiliar stories" New Statesman


Review from previous edition "handsome Oxford collection of spooks...plenty of flesh-creeping matter here" The Times

"The perfect book for long winter evenings of drawn curtains and flickering firelight." Books and Bookmen

"an excellent cross-section of familiar and unfamiliar stories" New Statesman

Michael Cox is Senior Commissioning Editor, Reference Books, at OUP and is currently compiling 'The Oxford Chronology of English Literature' on a freelance basis. His previous books for the Press include 'A Dictionary of Writers and Their Works', 'Victorian Ghost Stories' (with R. A. Gilbert), 'Victorian Detective Stories', and 'The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories'. R. A. Gilbert is a well-known antiquarian bookseller and a world authority on the historiography of esoteric thought in general, and on the occult currents of the nineteenth century in particular.

AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST