Complete Ghost Stories

by Charles Dickens

Overview

Charles Dickens' fascination with ghosts and the macabre is traced to his childhood, to the grim and goulish stories told him by his nursemaid, Mary Weller, whom he referred to as Mercy, "though she had none on me." Along with the horrors of the "penny dreadful" magazine, The Terrific Register -- a publication which made Dickens' "unspeakably miserable and frightened the very wits out of my head" -- the stories recounted by Weller were so powerful as to color Dickens' imagination and shape much of the enduring fiction he created.

In this collection, Peter Haining brings together all Dickens' ghost stories -- 20 in all -- including several long tales. Here are chilling histories of coincidence, insanity and revenge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781853267345
Publisher:	Wordsworth Editions, Limited
Publication date:	06/01/1998
Series:	Classics Series
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	269,643
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Born on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens was the second of eight children in a family burdened with financial troubles. Despite difficult early years, he became the most successful British writer of the Victorian age.

In 1824, young Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work at a boot-blacking factory when his improvident father, accompanied by his mother and siblings, was sentenced to three months in a debtor's prison. Once they were released, Charles attended a private school for three years. The young man then became a solicitor's clerk, mastered shorthand, and before long was employed as a Parliamentary reporter. When he was in his early twenties, Dickens began to publish stories and sketches of London life in a variety of periodicals.

It was the publication of Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) that catapulted the twenty-five-year-old author to national renown. Dickens wrote with unequaled speed and often worked on several novels at a time, publishing them first in monthly installments and then as books. His early novels Oliver Twist (1837-1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and A Christmas Carol (1843) solidified his enormous, ongoing popularity. As Dickens matured, his social criticism became increasingly biting, his humor dark, and his view of poverty darker still. David Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) are the great works of his masterful and prolific period.

In 1858 Dickens's twenty-three-year marriage to Catherine Hogarth dissolved when he fell in love with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. The last years of his life were filled with intense activity: writing, managing amateur theatricals, and undertaking several reading tours that reinforced the public's favorable view of his work but took an enormous toll on his health. Working feverishly to the last, Dickens collapsed and died on June 8, 1870, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood uncompleted.

Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of David Copperfield.

Date of Birth:

February 7, 1812

Date of Death:

June 18, 1870

Place of Birth:

Portsmouth, England

Place of Death:

Gad's Hill, Kent, England

Education:

Home-schooling; attended Dame School at Chatham briefly and Wellington