Marie O’Regan – The Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories By Women

Marie O’Regan  (ed.) – The Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories By Women  (Robinson, Nov. 2012)

Acknowledgements
Marie O’Regan – Introduction

Kim Lakin-Smith – Field Of The Dead
Sarah Pinborough – Collect Call
Kelley Armstrong – Dead Flowers By The Roadside
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Shadow In The Corner
Caitlan R. Kiernan – The Madam Of The Narrow Houses
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – The Lost Ghost
Sarah Langan – The Ninth Witch
Elizabeth Massie – Sister, Shhh …
Alex Bell – The Fifth Bedroom
Alison Littlewood – Scairt
Nina Allan – Seeing Nancy
Lisa Tuttle – The Third Person
Nancy Holder – Freeze Out
Yvonne Navarro – Return
Mary Cholmondeley – Let Loose
Marion Arnott – Another One In The Cold
Lilith Saintcrow – My Moira
Nancy Kilpatrick – Forgive Us
Muriel Gray – Front Row Rider
Cynthia Asquith – God Grant That She Lye Still
Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
Gail Z. Martin – Among The Shoals Forever
Edith Wharton – Afterward
Gaie Sebold – A Silver Music

Author Biographies

Richard Dalby – The Anthology Of Ghost Stories

Richard Dalby (ed.) – The Anthology Of Ghost Stories (Tiger, 1994)

Robert Aickman – The Unsettled Dust
Louisa Baldwin – How He Left the Hotel
Nugent Barker – Whessoe
E.F. Benson – The Shuttered Room
Ambrose Bierce – An Inhabitant of Carcosa
Charles Birkin – Is there Anybody there?
Algenon Blackwood – The Whisperers
L.M. Boston – Curfew
A.M. Burrage – I’m Sure it was No. 31
Ramsey Campbell – The Guide
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Limping Ghost
Wilkie Collins – Mrs Zant and the Ghost
Basil Copper – The House by the Tarn
Ralph A. Cram – In Kropfsberg Keep
Daniel Defoe – The Ghost in all the Rooms
Charles Dickens – The Bagman’s Uncle
Arthur Conan-Doyle – The Bully of Brocas Court
Amelia B. Edwards – In the Confessional
Shamus Frazer – The Tune in Dan’s Cafe
John S. Glasby – Beyond the Bourne
William Hope Hodgson – The Valley of Lost Children
Fergus Hume – The Sand-Walker
Henry James – The Real Right Thing
M.R. James – The Haunted Dolls’ House
Roger Johnson – The Wall-Painting
Rudyard Kipling – They
D.H. Lawrence – The Last Laugh
Margery Lawrence – Robin’s Rath
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Dream
R.H. Malden – The Sundial
Richard Marsh – The Fifteenth Man
John Metcalfe – Brenner’s Boy
Edith Nesbit – Uncle Abraham’s Romance
Fitz-James O’Brien – What was It?
Vincent O’Sullivan – The Next Room
Roger Pater – The Footstep of the Aventine
Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson
Forrest Reid – Courage
Mrs J.H. Riddell – The Last of Squire Ennismore
L.T.C. Rolt – The Garside Fell Disaster
David G. Rowlands – The Tears of St. Agatha
Saki – The Soul of Laploshka

I’m guessing Tiger were an instant remainder imprint?

If you’re looking for an A-S of great ghost story authors, this is one for you! At first glance a straight reprint of Richard Dalby’s Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories Vol 1, closer inspection reveals they’d not set aside enough pages so once we’re done with Saki’s story there’s no more room making the reference to Mark Twain on the cover entirely spurious. Worse, the stories gone AWOL include some of the best in the volume:
——————————————–
Sapper – The Old Dining-Room
Montague Summers – The Between-Maid
Mark Twain – A Ghost Story
Mark Valentine – The Folly
H. Russell Wakefield – Out of the Wrack I Rise
Karl Edward Wagner – In the Pines
Manly Wade Wellman – Where Angels Fear
Edward Lucas White – The House of the Nightmare
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
William J. Wintle – The Spectre Spiders

Michael Newton – The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories

Michael Newton (ed.) – The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce (Penguin, Feb 2010, £10.99)

Acknowledgements
Chronology Of The Ghost Story 1820-1914
Introduction
Further Reading
A Note On The Texts

Elizabeth Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
Fitz-James O’Brien – What Was It?
Edward Bulwer Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters: or, The House And The Brain
Mary E. Braddon – The Cold Embrace
Amelia B. Edwards – The North Mail
Charles Dickens – No 1 Branch Line: The Signalman
J. S. Le Fanu – Green Tea
Harriet Beecher Stowe – The Ghost In The Cap’n Brown House
Robert Louis Stevenson – Thrawn Janet
Margaret Oliphant – The Open Door
Rudyard Kipling – At The End Of The Passage
Lafcadio Hearn – Nightmare Touch
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – The Wind In The Rose-Bush
M. R. James – “Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad”
Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road
Henry James – The Jolly Corner
Mary Austin – The Readjustment
Edith Wharton – Afterward

Glossary Of Scots Words
Biographical And Explanatory Notes

Blurb:
‘The ghost is the most enduring figure in supernatural fiction. He is absolutely indestructible… He changes with the styles in fiction but he never goes out of fashion. He is the really permanent citizen of the earth, for mortals, at best, are but transients’ – Dorothy Scarborough

This new selection of ghost stories, by Michael Newton, brings together the best of the genre. From Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ through to Edith Wharton’s ‘Afterword’, this collection covers all of the most terrifying tales of the genre. With a thoughtful introduction, and helpful notes, Newton places the stories contextually within the genre and elucidates the changing nature of the ghost story and how we interpret it.

The Wordsworth Book Of Horror Stories

The Wordsworth Book Of Horror Stories (Wordsworth Special Editions, 2005)

A. and C. Askew – Aylmer Vance And The Vampire
Honore de Balzac – The Mysterious Mansion
Richard Harris Barham – The Spectre Of Tappington
Ambrose Bierce – The Damned Thing
Miss Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
A. Clergyman – A Ghostly Manifestation
————-  Correspondence On ‘A Ghostly Manifestation’
Wilkie Collins – A Terribly Strange Bed
Charles Dickens – The Story Of The Bagman’s Uncle
————-  To Be Taken With A Grain Of Salt
————-  The Signalman
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brazilian Cat
————-  The Ring Of Thoth
————-  The Lord Of Chateau Noir
————-  The New Catacomb
————-  The Case Of Lady Sannox
————-  The Brown Hand
————-  The Horror Of The Heights
————-  The Terror Of Blue John Gap
————-  The Captain Of The Polestar
————-  How It Happened
————-  Playing With Fire
————-  The Leather Funnel
————-  Lot No. 249
————-  The Los Amigos Fiasco
————-  The Nightmare Room
Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Squire’s Story
W. F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
R. S. Hawker – The Botathen Ghost
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
W. H. Hodgson – The Gateway Of The Monster
James Hogg – The Story Of Euphemia Hewit
Violet Hunt – The Prayer
W. W, Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Henry James – The Jolly Corner
M. R. James – A School Story
————-  Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook
————-  Lost Hearts
————-  The Mezzotint
————-  The Ash Tree
————-  Number 13
————-  Count Magnus
————-  ‘Oh, Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’
————-  The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas
————-  The Rose Garden
————-  The Tractate Middoth
————-  Casting The Runes
————-  The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral
————-  Martin’s Close
————-  Mr. Humphreys And His Inheritance
————-  The Residence At Whitminster
————-  The Diary Of Mr. Poynter
————-  An Episode In Cathedral History
————-  The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance
————-  Two Doctors
————-  The Haunted Dolls House
————- The Uncommon Prayer Book
————-  A Neighbour’s Landmark
————-  A View From A Hill
————-  A Warning To The Curious
————-  An Evening’s Entertainment
————-  There Was A Man Dwelt By A Graveyard
————-  Rats
————-  After Dark In The Playing Fields
————-  Wailing Well
————-  Stories I Have Tried To Write
Rudyard Kipling – The Mark Of The Beast
Perceval Landon – Thurnley Abbey
John Lang  – Fisher’s Ghost
D. H. Lawrence – The Rocking-Horse Winner
J. S. Le Fanu  An Account Of Some Strange Disturbances In Aungier Street
————-  Narrative Of The Ghost Of A Hand
————-  Green Tea
————-  Madam Crowl’s Ghost
————-  Squire Toby’s Will
————-  Dickon The Devil
————-  The Child That Went With The Fairies
————-  The White Cat Of Drumgunniol
————-  Ghost Stories Of Chapelizod
————-  Wicked Captain Walshawe, Of Wauling
————-  Sir Dominick’s Bargain
————-  Ultor De Lacy
————-  The Vision Of Tom Chuff
————-  Stories Of Lough Guir
Lord Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters
Guy De Maupassant – Vendetta
E. Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Howard Pease – In The Cliff Land Of The Dane
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
————-  The Black Cat
A. M. Pushkin – The Ace Of Spades
Saki (H. H. Munro) – Laura
————-  Sredni Vashtar
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
————-  Wandering Willie’s Tale
Robert Louis Stevenson – Markheim
————-  Thrawn Janet
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Edmund Lenthal Swifte – Ghost In The Tower
William Makepeace Thackeray – The Story Of Mary Ancel
Hugh Walpole – Tarnhelm
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost

thanks to Severance of Vault for typing the contents!

A Century Of Ghost Stories

Anon [Dorothy M. Thomlinson?] (ed.) – A Century Of Ghost Stories (Hutchinson, 1935)

Many thanks to Richard Humphreys who kindly provided this enchanting dust-jacket scan.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Familiar
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Green Tea
Cecil Binney – The Saint And The Vicar
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Anthony Gittins – Gibbet Lane
Mrs Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
M.R. James – The Residence At Whitminster
M.R. James – A Warning To The Curious
Sir Edward Bulwer- Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters
Walter De La Mare – The Green Room
Miss Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
Edith Wharton – Afterward
Ambrose Bierce – The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot
F. Marion Crawford – Man Overboard!
Shane Leslie – In A Glass Dimly
Shane Leslie – The Lord-In-Waiting
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
E.F. Benson – Expiation
E.F. Benson – Pirates
Algernon Blackwood – The Woman’s Ghost Story
Percival Landon – Thurnley Abbey
Oliver Onions – The Rosewood Door
Vernon Lee – The Virgin Of The Seven Daggers
Mrs Oliphant – The Library Window
Ann Bridge – The Song In The House
Violet Hunt – The Operation
Ex-Private X – The Sweeper
Ex-Private X – The Running Tide
W.L. George – Perez
——————–
R. H. Barham – The Spectre Of Tappington
Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Grey Champion
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Frederick Marryat – The Werewolf
Charles Dickens – The Story Of The Bagman’s Uncle
E. Nesbit – John Charrington’s Wedding
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
Frederich Von Schiller – The Ghost-Seer
Alan Cunningham – The Haunted Ships
Ludwig Tieck – The Klausenburg
R. S. Hawker – The Bothanon Ghost
George Eliot – The Lifted Veil

A Century Of Ghost Stories (1936) is a much extended edition of the previous year’s Fifty Years Of Ghost Stories which includes only the stories listed above the dotted line (i.e., from Le Fanu’s The Familiar through to W. L. George’s Perez).

Detail from cover of 50 Years Of Ghost Stories provided by All Things Horror

R. Chetwynd-Hayes & Stephen Jones – Tales to Freeze the Blood

R. Chetwynd-Hayes & Stephen Jones – Tales to Freeze the Blood: More Great Ghost Stories (Carroll & Graf, 2006)

Foreword – Stephen Jones
Introduction – R. Chetwynd-Hayes

O. Henry – The Furnished Room
Ambrose Bierce – The Night Doings At “Deadman’s”
Sydney J. Bounds – A Little Night Fishing
Anon – Not Yet Solved
Guy de Maupassant – The Hostelry
Mrs Claxton – The Grey Cottage
Mrs Crowe – Round The Fire
F. Marion Crawford – The Doll’s Ghost
J. S. Le Fanu – Madam Crowl’s Ghost
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Cold Embrace
Anon – At Ravenholme Junction
Amelia B. Edwards – How The Third Floor Knew The Potteries
Sir Richard Burton – The Saving Of A Soul
Fritz Hopman – The Bearer Of The Message
M. R. James – Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book
E. & H. Heron – The Story Of Medhans Lea
Richard Middleton – The Passing Of Edward
E. Owens Blackbourne – An Unsolved Mystery
Emily Bronte – The Horrors Of Sleep
Tony Richards – Streets Of The City
Mary E. Penn – In The Dark
Steve Rasnic Tem – Shadows On The Grass
Rick Kennett – The Roads Of Donnington
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Day That Father Brought Something Home

Blurb:

With twenty-four more chilling tales culled from the Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories series, edited from 1972 to 1984 by acclaimed horror fiction writer and anthologist R. Chetwynd-Hayes, this follow-up to 2004’s Great Ghost Stories features rarities and classics from the masters of the ghost story like O. Henry, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, M.R. James, and Guy de Maupassant, as well as haunting stories from lesser-known greats.

From a dead man emerging from a hole in the cabin floor in Ambrose Bierce’s The Night-Doings at ‘Deadman’s’ and Mrs. Crowe’s tale of supernatural experiences in polite Victorian society, to Richard Burton’s “authentic” account of a haunting in the Castle of Weixelstein in 1559 to Emily Bronte’s poem The Horrors of Sleep about a mystic world that exists just beyond the frontiers of ours, this collection resurrects two dozen eerie tales of suspense and horror.

Great Ghost Stories

R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Stephen Jones (eds.) – Great Ghost Stories (Cemetery Dance, Carroll & Graf, 2004)

Les Edwards

Foreword – Stephen Jones
Introduction – R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Amelia B. Edwards – The Four-Fifteen Express
Richard Middleton – On the Brighton Road
Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road
G. B. S.- The Whittaker’s Ghost
S. Baring-Gould – The Leaden Ring
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Ghost Stories Of The Tiled House
F. Marion Crawford – The Dead Smile
Daniel Defoe – The Ghost of Dorothy Dingley
Anon – The Dead Man Of Varley Grange
E. Nesbit – John Charrington’s Wedding
Sydney J. Bounds – The Night Walkers
Amyas Northcote – Brickett Bottom
John Kendrick Bangs – The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
Stephen King – The Reaper’s Image
Jerome K. Jerome – Christmas Eve in the Blue Chamber
Steve Rasnic Tem – Housewarming
Ramsey Campbell – The Ferries
Tina Rath – The Fetch
Washington Irving – Guests From Gibbet Island
Garry Kilworth – The Tryst
Guy de Maupassant – An Apparition
Brian Lumley – Aunt Hester
Tony Richards – Our Lady Of The Shadows
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – She Walks on Dry Land

Can anyone see the sense in this? Take a series of everyman pocket paperbacks like The Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories, which, in their day were available in just about every newsagent and supermarket up and down the country, and like as not got several people on here reading the stuff. Make a random selection from volumes 17-20. Get Les Edwards to design you a terrific cover, fully in sympathy with the original series. Now, have the thing printed, making sure it’s as unnecessarily bulky as possible, and run off just enough copies so that it sells out prior to publication. Appealing to the “I’ve still got my factory sealed, never been opened, worth a bomb!” non-reading market is all very well, but it’s also driving another stake into the heart of what’s supposed to be ‘popular fiction’. Hope they won an award for it.

Anyway, here’s the Blurb:

Eerie atmospherics, a sense of foreboding, then the unease, a chill, a shudder, ghosts, terror — again and again, in the twenty-five superbly scary tales of this standout anthology, they’re conjured artfully, both by modern masters of the macabre, among them Stephen King, Garry Kilworth, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, and Tony Richards, and by literary greats like Ambrose Bierce, Washington Irving, Sir Water Scott, and J Sheridan Le Fanu. Culled from the renowned Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories series, which was edited from 1972 to 1984 by horror fiction writer and erudite anthologist R Chetwynd-Hayes, these highly original, and often long-obscure tales reflect the enduring fascination in our literary tradition with phantoms, specters, ghouls, and wraiths. There’s a fetch (i.e., doppelganger) too — in Tina Rath’s nasty take on a violent husband, his shrinking wife, and a scheming woman. And behind Guy de Maupassant’s simply titled “An Apparition” lurks a tale that Chetwynd-Hayes places among the top ten most terrifying ghost stories ever written. From Daniel Defoe’s engaging period piece, “The Ghost of Dorothy Dingley,” set in 1665, to the subtle slice of contemporary ghostly life in Stephen King’s “The Reaper’s Image,” dread takes many fearsome guises in the three centuries of chilling fiction collected here, and solace lies only at the feet of a very dark angel.

Richard Dalby – Virago Book Of Ghost Stories 2006

Richard Dalby (ed.) – The Virago Book Of Ghost Stories (Virago, 2006)

Cover illustration: Tina Mansuwan at CIA

Inside cover blurb:
Bringing together vintage tales from the outstandingly successful Virago anthologies The Virago Book of Ghost Storied (Volumes I and II) and Victorian Ghost Stories, comes this chilling new omnibus.
Lost loves, past enmities and unwanted memories mingle with the inexplicable as unquiet souls return to repay kindnesses, settle scores and haunt the imagination.
Featuring some of the finest writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these stories gather to haunt and horrify — an irresistible read for those with a taste for being spooked.

Preface – Richard Dalby

Charlotte Bronte – Napoleon And The Spectre
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
Amelia B. Edwards – The Story Of Salome
Mrs Henry Wood – Reality Or Delusion?
Charlotte Riddell – The Old House In Vauxhall Walk
Margaret Oliphant – The Open Door
Ella D’Arcy – The Villa Lucienne
Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) – The Vacant Lot
E. Nesbit – The Violet Car
Edith Wharton -The Eyes
May Sinclair – The Token
Richmal Crompton – Rosalind
Margery H. Lawrence – The Haunted Saucepan
Margaret Irwin – The Book
F. M. Mayor – Miss De Mannering Of Asham
Ann Bridge – The Station Road
Stella Gibbons – Roaring Tower
Elizabeth Bowen – The Happy Autumn Fields
Rosemary Timperley – The Mistress in Black
Celia Fremlin – Don’t Tell Cissie
Antonia Fraser – Who’s Been Sitting In My Car
Ruth Rendell – The Haunting Of Shawley Rectory
A. S. Byatt – The July Ghost
A. L. Barker – The Dream Of Fair Women
Penelope Lively – Black Dog
Rosemary Pardoe – The Chauffeur
Lisa St. Aubin De Teran – Diamond Jim
Angela Carter – Ashputtle
Elizabeth Fancett – The Ghost Of Calagou
Joan Aikin – The Traitor
Dorothy K. Haynes – Redundant

Notes on the authors

Rex Collings – Classic Victorian & Edwardian Ghost

Rex Collings (ed) – Classic Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories (Wordsworth Classics, 1996)

Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
Richard Harris Barham – The Spectre of Tappington
R.S. Hawker – The Botathen Ghost
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Squire’s Story
William Makepeace Thackeray – The Story of Mary Ancel
Charles Dickens – The Story of the Bagman’s Uncle
Charles Dickens – To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt
J.S. le Fanu – An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Steert
J.S. le Fanu – Narrative of a Ghost of a Hand
John Lang – Fisher’s Ghost
Wilkie Collins – The Traveller’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed
Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach
Miss Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
Robert Louis Stevenson – Markheim
Edith Nesbit – Man-Size in Marble
The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
M.R. James – The Haunted Doll’s House
M.R. James – A School Story
Perceval Landon – Thurnley Abbey
Howard Pease – In the Cliff Land of the Dane
Saki – Laura

Blurb:

This is a book to be read by a blazing fire on a winter’s night, with the curtains drawn close and the doors securely locked.

The unquiet souls of the dead, both as fictional creations and as ‘real’ apparitions, roam the pages of this haunting new selection of ghost stories by Rex Collings. Some of these stories are classics while others are lesser-known gems unearthed from this vintage era of tales of the supernatural.

There are stories from distant lands – Fisher’s Ghost by John Lang is set in Australia and A Ghostly Manifestation by ‘A Clergyman’ is set in Calcutta.

In this selection, Sir Walter Scott (a Victorian in spirit if not in fact), keeps company with Edgar Allen Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu and other illustrious masters of the genre.

Richard Dalby – Virago Book Of Victorian Ghost Stories

Richard Dalby (ed.) – The Virago Book Of Victorian Ghost Stories (Virago, 1988)

Preface    – Richard Dalby
Introduction – Jennifer Uglow

Charlotte Bronte – Napoleon And The Spectre
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Old Nurse’s Story
Dinah M. Mulock – The Last House In C— Street
Catherine Crowe – Round The Fire
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Cold Embrace
Rosa Mulholland – Not To Be Taken At Bedtime
Amelia B. Edwards – The Story Of Salome
Rhoda Broughton – The Truth, The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth
Mrs Henry Wood – Reality Or Delusion?
Vernon Lee – Winthrop’s Adventure
Charlotte Riddell – The Old House In Vauxhall Walk
Margaret Oliphant – The Open Door
Lanoe Falconer – Cecilia De Noel
Louisa Baldwin – Many Waters Cannot Quench Love
Violet Hunt – The Prayer
Mary Cholomondeley – Let Loose
Ella D’Arcy – The Villa Lucienne
Gertrude Atherton – The Striding Place
Willa Cattier – The Affair At Grover Station
Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) – The Vacant Lot
Isabella Banks – Haunted!

Notes on the authors