Sometimes it’s a married man, like Dick Tippens in Old Mrs Jones, doing quite well for himself, deciding to rent a house said to be haunted by Mrs Jones, a woman who was supposedly ill-treated by her husband & who disappeared mysteriously. A man, often young & over-confident, agrees to stay in a house to disprove those rumours of haunting. A house, left empty for some time, is rumoured to be haunted. The stories in this collection are all similar in their setup. I think she’s also unusual in choosing male narrators, often in the first person, for her stories. Women writers proved to be particularly adept at the ghost story &, on the evidence of this collection, Charlotte Riddell was one of the most effective at creating a genuinely spooky atmosphere. The sensation novel created a market for the shocking & the unusual & there were many periodicals looking for short stories to fill their pages. The popularity of the ghost story really grew in the Victorian period. I was also reminded of this book because, as I mentioned last week, I’ve ordered the new Tramp Press edition of Charlotte Riddell’s A Struggle for Fame, which I’m looking forward to reading even more now. I have quite a few collections on the tbr shelves & with Halloween last week, I decided to read one of the collections reprinted by Victorian Secrets. I love a good ghost story & I don’t read enough of them.
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