Macmillan Collector’s Library: Ghost Stories

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Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth, where his father worked as a clerk. Living in London in 1824, Dickens was sent by his family to work in a blacking-warehouse, and his father was arrested and imprisoned for debt. Fortunes improved and Dickens returned to school, eventually becoming a parliamentary reporter. His first piece of fiction was published by a magazine in December 1832, and by 1836 he had begun his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. He focused his career on writing, completing fourteen highly successful novels including Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and Bleak House, as well as penning journalism, shorter fiction and travel books. He died in 1870.

Throughout his illustrious writing career, Charles Dickens often turned his hand to fashioning short pieces of ghostly fiction. Even in his first successful work, The Pickwick Papers, you will find five ghost stories, all of which are included in this collection. Dickens began the tradition of 'the ghost story at Christmas', and many of his tales in this genre are presented here, including the brilliant novella 'The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain', which deserves to be as well-known as A Christmas Carol. While all his supernatural tales aim to send a shiver down the spine, they are not without the usual traits of Dickens' flamboyant style: his subtle wit, biting irony, humorous incidents and moral observations. It is a mixture that makes these stories fascinating and entertaining as well as unsettling. To paraphrase the Fat Boy in The Pickwick Papers: Charles Dickens 'wants to make your flesh creep'. This collection brings together all Dickens' ghost stories - twenty in all - including several longer tales. Here are chilling histories of coincidence, insanity and revenge. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Ghost Stories is illustrated by various artists, with an afterword by David Stuart Davies. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

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