Product Description
A bumper collection of fifty-four classic Edwardian ghost and horror stories by a master of the genre, including many stories never before available on Kindle. The text has been carefully edited and formatted, with an active table of contents and section markers for easy browsing.
The month is December, the year 1911. Outside, the wind howls, and the branches of the mulberry tree tap at your window. Inside your study, you draw your chair closer to the fire, ring for your servant to bring you the whisky bottle and soda siphon, and reach for your copy of ‘The Illustrated London News’. A frisson of delight, tempered by a fluttering of nervous apprehension, runs through you when you see that the cover features a brand-new ‘Spook Story’ by celebrated author E. F. Benson …
Benson’s ghost stories, written between 1906 and 1934, evoke a bygone England of imperious ladies and bewhiskered gentlemen riding in huge unreliable chauffeur-driven motor cars to country-house parties, where they would play golf, croquet and bridge before donning evening wear for dinner. Electric light was a new-fangled invention, installed only by the wealthy and intrepid; radio was known as ‘Mr Marconi’s apparatus’. The era, popularised in the TV series Downton Abbey, marked the height of Britain’s Empire, on which the sun famously never set.
Benson’s stories, written for the periodicals of the age, were keenly awaited by his many admirers. They range from the disturbing (some would say disturbed) through the pleasingly chilling to the light-hearted. The influence of M. R. James, with whom Benson was well acquainted, is obvious. Some of the stories are pure horror; others are more conventional tales of hauntings. Vampires also feature. All the spooks, monsters and apparitions have one thing in common: they are thoroughly malevolent, bent on visiting pestilence, madness and ideally an agonising death on anyone foolhardy enough to disturb or invoke them.
This collection brings together, for the first time on Kindle, all fifty-four of Benson’s ghost stories. They are suitable for readers of all ages, except those of a nervous disposition, who would be well advised to seek tamer material for their late-night reading, or at the very least to keep their smelling-salts close at hand.
The Kindle edition of the Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson contains all these stories for you to curl up with:
The Room in the Tower - At the Farmhouse - Mrs. Amworth - In the Tube - Roderick’s Story - The Hanging of Alfred Wadham - Christopher Comes Back - The Wishing-Well - How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery - Outside the Door - The Other Bed - Corstophine - The Temple - The Man Who Went Too Far - The Outcast - Naboth’s Vineyard - Home, Sweet Home - “And No Bird Sings” - Pirates - The Bus-Conductor - Monkeys - Gavon’s Eve - The Cat - The Terror by Night - Machaon - The Confession of Charles Linkworth - Inscrutable Decrees - The Face - Expiation - The Step - James Lamp - The Sanctuary - The Horror-Horn - The Shootings of Achnaleish - Negotium Perambulans - Bagnell Terrace - “And the Dead Spake—” - The Gardener - Reconciliation - At Abdul Ali’s Grave - Caterpillars - The House with the Brick-Kiln - The Bed by the Window - The Dance - The Bath-Chair - Between the Lights - The Thing in the Hall - The Corner House - A Tale of an Empty House - The Psychical Mallards - The Dust-Cloud - Mr. Tilly’s Séance - Thursday Evenings – Spinach.
** Also check out another great value title in this series: 'The Lady Chillers - classic ghost and horror stories by women writers'. (Fifteen complete stories by Edwardian and Victorian mistresses of the macabre.) ***
The month is December, the year 1911. Outside, the wind howls, and the branches of the mulberry tree tap at your window. Inside your study, you draw your chair closer to the fire, ring for your servant to bring you the whisky bottle and soda siphon, and reach for your copy of ‘The Illustrated London News’. A frisson of delight, tempered by a fluttering of nervous apprehension, runs through you when you see that the cover features a brand-new ‘Spook Story’ by celebrated author E. F. Benson …
Benson’s ghost stories, written between 1906 and 1934, evoke a bygone England of imperious ladies and bewhiskered gentlemen riding in huge unreliable chauffeur-driven motor cars to country-house parties, where they would play golf, croquet and bridge before donning evening wear for dinner. Electric light was a new-fangled invention, installed only by the wealthy and intrepid; radio was known as ‘Mr Marconi’s apparatus’. The era, popularised in the TV series Downton Abbey, marked the height of Britain’s Empire, on which the sun famously never set.
Benson’s stories, written for the periodicals of the age, were keenly awaited by his many admirers. They range from the disturbing (some would say disturbed) through the pleasingly chilling to the light-hearted. The influence of M. R. James, with whom Benson was well acquainted, is obvious. Some of the stories are pure horror; others are more conventional tales of hauntings. Vampires also feature. All the spooks, monsters and apparitions have one thing in common: they are thoroughly malevolent, bent on visiting pestilence, madness and ideally an agonising death on anyone foolhardy enough to disturb or invoke them.
This collection brings together, for the first time on Kindle, all fifty-four of Benson’s ghost stories. They are suitable for readers of all ages, except those of a nervous disposition, who would be well advised to seek tamer material for their late-night reading, or at the very least to keep their smelling-salts close at hand.
The Kindle edition of the Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson contains all these stories for you to curl up with:
The Room in the Tower - At the Farmhouse - Mrs. Amworth - In the Tube - Roderick’s Story - The Hanging of Alfred Wadham - Christopher Comes Back - The Wishing-Well - How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery - Outside the Door - The Other Bed - Corstophine - The Temple - The Man Who Went Too Far - The Outcast - Naboth’s Vineyard - Home, Sweet Home - “And No Bird Sings” - Pirates - The Bus-Conductor - Monkeys - Gavon’s Eve - The Cat - The Terror by Night - Machaon - The Confession of Charles Linkworth - Inscrutable Decrees - The Face - Expiation - The Step - James Lamp - The Sanctuary - The Horror-Horn - The Shootings of Achnaleish - Negotium Perambulans - Bagnell Terrace - “And the Dead Spake—” - The Gardener - Reconciliation - At Abdul Ali’s Grave - Caterpillars - The House with the Brick-Kiln - The Bed by the Window - The Dance - The Bath-Chair - Between the Lights - The Thing in the Hall - The Corner House - A Tale of an Empty House - The Psychical Mallards - The Dust-Cloud - Mr. Tilly’s Séance - Thursday Evenings – Spinach.
** Also check out another great value title in this series: 'The Lady Chillers - classic ghost and horror stories by women writers'. (Fifteen complete stories by Edwardian and Victorian mistresses of the macabre.) ***
