It took me 5 years to finish this book - not, I hasten to add, because I didn't enjoy it but, rather, because I savoured its stories, dipping into the anthology between longer reads. Indeed, I consider it one of my favourite supernatural anthologies in my not-negligible bookshelf of weird fiction.

The collection is itself a sort of "best of" compilation, bringing together over thirty of the finest stories in The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories , The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century Volume I and The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century Volume II . Virago publishes exclusively fiction by women and this book is a corrective to supernatural anthologies which inexplicably sideline female authors . The collection ranges from the early 19th Century to contemporary fiction, and features authors who are considered to be specialists in the field (Edith Nesbit, Margaret Oliphant, Charlotte Riddell, Amelia Edwards to name but a few) alongside writers who occasionally delved into the genre (Charlotte Bronte, Antonia Fraser). Styles vary too - some stories set out to shock but most keep their terrors understated. The more contemporary offerings tend to be more experimental - ranging from comic stories, to reworkings of fairy tales, to poetic stories which verge on magical realism. The hauntings themselves are also varied in nature - haunted houses and castles abound, but there's also a possessed car, ghostly animals and - in "The Vacant Lot" - well, a haunted vacant lot.

This is an anthology which holds plenty of delights to the ghost story lover and proves that women writers were and still at the forefront of the development of supernatural fiction. ( )

It took me 5 years to finish this book - not, I hasten to add, because I didn't enjoy it but, rather, because I savoured its stories, dipping into the anthology between longer reads. Indeed, I consider it one of my favourite supernatural anthologies in my not-negligible bookshelf of weird fiction.

The collection is itself a sort of "best of" compilation, bringing together over thirty of the finest stories in The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories , The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century Volume I and The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century Volume II . Virago publishes exclusively fiction by women and this book is a corrective to supernatural anthologies which inexplicably sideline female authors . The collection ranges from the early 19th Century to contemporary fiction, and features authors who are considered to be specialists in the field (Edith Nesbit, Margaret Oliphant, Charlotte Riddell, Amelia Edwards to name but a few) alongside writers who occasionally delved into the genre (Charlotte Bronte, Antonia Fraser). Styles vary too - some stories set out to shock but most keep their terrors understated. The more contemporary offerings tend to be more experimental - ranging from comic stories, to reworkings of fairy tales, to poetic stories which verge on magical realism. The hauntings themselves are also varied in nature - haunted houses and castles abound, but there's also a possessed car, ghostly animals and - in "The Vacant Lot" - well, a haunted vacant lot.

This is an anthology which holds plenty of delights to the ghost story lover and proves that women writers were and still at the forefront of the development of supernatural fiction. ( )