Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, Guy de Maupassant, Richard Marsh
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Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( B ) -> Bierce, Ambrose
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5
Average rating: 3.0 of 5
Try not to be a bride in a ghost story 3 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.
If you're looking for ghosts in your ghost stories, this book might disappoint you. Even the cover story, "A Bottomless Grave" has no ghost. However we do have Victorian witches, psychic detectives, con artists, revenge-suicides, and grave-robbers.
There are three humorous ghost stories, which editor Hugh Lamb realizes are not to everyone's taste so he issues an advance warning: "I've put them all together so that those in quest of thrills alone may bypass them if they wish."
I did indeed wish. One of them, "A Ghost Slayer" by J. Keighley Snowden is written in dialect and almost impossible to read, anyway.
Lamb writes very detailed introductions featuring the authors, so if you have an interest in obscure Victorian writers, this book is well worth its purchase price. And there are a handful of scary stories--some even have ghosts in them. Here are my favorites among the twenty-one tales in this collection:
"The Ship that saw a Ghost" by Frank Norris--A very atmospheric tale of a tramp steamer and an ancient three-masted derelict that first appears in "the red eye of the setting moon."
"The Man with the Nose" by Rhoda Broughton--A bride on an extended honeymoon keeps seeing a sinister figure with a prominent nose. The story reminds me of Le Fanu's "Schalken the Painter." It's tough to be a bride in a ghost story--sort of like being an extra in a 'Star Trek' episode.
"The Haunted Chair" by Richard Marsh--Members of an exclusive London club keep seeing a disreputable gambler who was supposedly exiled to Ceylon. He also seems to be stealing their wallets.
"The Story of Baelbrow" by E. and H. Heron--Flaxman Low, scientist and psychic detective is called into a haunted house when a housemaid is found dead in a corridor with a mysterious pustule behind her ear. Did the family ghost suddenly discover a taste for blood? Why is it biting folks behind their ears?
Editorial Review:
Selected from the works of American, British, and French writers, 21 rare and seldom-anthologized stories include "A Bottomless Grave" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Ship that Saw a Ghost" by Frank Norris, Guy de Maupassant's "The Tomb," Richard Marsh's "The Haunted Chair," and other hard-to-find gems of the genre.
