Horror for People Who Don't Like Horror

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (1986): edited by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert, containing the following stories:

⦁ The Tapestried Chamber (1828) by Sir Walter Scott
⦁ The Phantom Coach (1864) by Amelia B. Edwards
⦁ Squire Toby's Will (1868) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
⦁ The Shadow in the Corner (1879) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
⦁ The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford
⦁ A Wicked Voice (1890) by Vernon Lee
⦁ The Judge's House (1891) by Bram Stoker
⦁ Man-Size in Marble (1886) by E. Nesbit
⦁ The Roll-Call of the Reef (1895) by Arthur Quiller-Couch
⦁ The Friends of the Friends (1896) by Henry James
⦁ The Red Room (1896) by H. G. Wells
⦁ The Monkey's Paw (1902) by W. W. Jacobs
⦁ The Lost Ghost (1903) by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
⦁ "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" (1904) by M. R. James
⦁ The Empty House (1906) by Algernon Blackwood
⦁ The Cigarette Case (1910) by Oliver Onions
⦁ Rose Rose (1910) by Barry Pain
⦁ The Confession of Charles Linkworth (1912) by E. F. Benson
⦁ On the Brighton Road (1912) by Richard Middleton
⦁ Bone to His Bone (1912) by E. G. Swain
⦁ The True History of Anthony Ffryar (1911) by Arthur Gray
⦁ The Taipan (1922) by W. Somerset Maugham
⦁ The Victim (1922) by May Sinclair
⦁ A Visitor from Down Under (1926) by L. P. Hartley
⦁ Fullcircle (1920) by John Buchan
⦁ The Clock (1928) by William Fryer Harvey
⦁ Old Man's Beard (1929) by H. Russell Wakefield
⦁ Mr. Jones (1928) by Edith Wharton
⦁ Smee (1929) by A. M. Burrage
⦁ The Little Ghost (1922) by Hugh Walpole
⦁ Ahoy, Sailor Boy! (1933) by A. E. Coppard
⦁ The Hollow Man (1933) by Thomas Burke
⦁ Et in Sempiternum Pereant (1935) by Charles Williams
⦁ Bosworth Summit Pound (1948) by L. T. C. Rolt
⦁ An Encounter in the Mist (1949) by A. N. L. Munby
⦁ Hand in Glove (1952) by Elizabeth Bowen
⦁ A Story of Don Juan (1941) by V. S. Pritchett
⦁ Cushi (1952) by Christopher Woodforde
⦁ Bad Company (1955) by Walter de la Mare
⦁ The Bottle of 1912 (1961) by Simon Raven
⦁ The Cicerones (1967) by Robert Aickman
⦁ Soft Voices at Passenham (1981) by T. H. White


Lengthy reprint anthology with numerous flaws, including the annoying omission of biographical information and publication dates for the individual stories at the beginning of each story.

There's also a certain nebulousness to the volume's construction of an "English ghost story." It's not necessarily written by an English-person. It isn't necessarily set in England. And it doesn't necessarily involve a ghost.

The editors' introduction does indicate where they come down on the issue of graphic violence in horror -- they're against it. Huzzah! I'll tell you, if nothing else, the introduction comes across as almost parodically upper-class-academic English. Blah blah, woof woof.

There are some excellent stories here. There's also an awful lot of time-wasting with stories that are very polite with their ghosts and don't seem to have any interest in scaring anbody. We get a few sentimental stories of sad, lost ghosts. We get a lot of one-twist stories in which the twist is, there's a ghost! Oh my heavens! That character is actually a ghost? Really? I did not see that one coming.

Thankfully, there are also some old stand-bys. "The Upper Berth" by F. Marion Crawford is a genuinely great story in one of my favourite horror sub-genres, that of the story in which someone gets into a fist-fight with a ghost. "The Cicerones" is one of horror-master Robert Aickman's shortest stories, and one of his most enigmatically potent.

"A Visitor from Down Under" by L. P. Hartley contains one of the most sinister (yet morally justified) ghosts in the genre, deployed in a story that has its droll moments (the ghost takes public transit) amidst the awfulness. And the short, very short, "The Clock" by  William Fryer Harvey is a neglected masterpiece of brevity and ghastly wit, with one of the more remarkably quick-witted and quick-moving protagonists in the history of ghost stories.

The editors really aren't all that interested in ghosts stories after about 1950. The entry by the usually fine de la Mare is neglible. The entry by T.H. White that closes the book was actually written in the 1930's, meaning that the editors don't bother with any writers of ghost stories between 1967 and 1986, the time of the greatest horror boom in publishing history. Nice work, boys. Recommended for many of the stories but not all of them, and what a lazy bit of editing and scholarship this book turns out to be. Editorial hackwork.