From the once-popular yet unfairly neglected Victorian writer Charlotte Riddell comes a pair of novels which cleverly upholster the familiar furniture of the haunted house story. In An Uninhabited House, the hauntings are seen through the perspective of the solicitors who hold the deed of the property. What happens when the world of commerce and law meets the supernatural? In Fairy Water, Riddell suggests a complex moral character for her haunting spirit. Her succinct, witty writing style renders the story a spirited and approachable read despite its age.

Haunted Houses: Two Novels (Tales of the Weird)

Literature & Fiction

Riddell, Charlotte

Humor & Satire

British Library Publishing

The first in Tramp Press's much anticipated Recovered Voices series, this is a charming and beautifully written Victorian novel from a brilliant but forgotten early female novelist. It follows the story of young Glen Westley, who is faced with a new life after the death of her mother.

A Struggle for Fame (Recovered Voices)

Genre Fiction

Tramp Press

Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age.\nWimbourne Books presents the seventh in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 7 in the series spans the years 1857 to 1898, contains ghost stories set at or around Christmas, and includes stories from a wide range of authors including Sabine Baring-Gould, Charlotte Riddell and Florence Marryat.\nReaders new to this genre will discover its pleasures; the Victorian quaintness, the sometimes shocking difference in social norms, the almost comical politeness and structured etiquette, the archaic and precise language, but mostly the Victorians’ skill at stoking our fears and trepidations, our insecurities and doubts. Even if you are already an aficionado of the ghostly tale there is much within these pages to interest you. Wait until the dark of the snowy night (preferably on Christmas Eve), lock the doors, shutter the windows, light the fire, sit with your back to the wall and bury yourself in the Victorian macabre. Try not to let the creaking floorboards, the distant howl of a dog, the chill breeze that caresses the candle, the shadows in the far recesses of your room, disturb your concentration.\nIncludes the stories; The Wedding-Ring (1857) – Miles Gerald Keon; All Alone on Christmas Day (1858) – James Hain Friswell; The Ghost in the Clock Room (1859) – Hesba Stretton; The Ghost in the Double Room (1859) – George Augustus Sala; The Spectre’s Visit (1859) – Anne Sarah Bushby; Glámr (1863) – Sabine Baring-Gould; The Ghost Detective (1865) – Mark Lemon; Hertford O’Donnell’s Warning (1867) – Charlotte Riddell; The Brown Lady (1869) – Frances Cashel Hoey; The Phantom Flash (1870) – William Wilthew Fenn; Christmas Eve at a Cornish Manor-House (1878) – Clara Venn; The Ghost of Charlotte Cray (1878) – Florence Marryat; The Curse of the Catafalques (1882) – F. Anstey; Number Ninety (1886) – Bithia Mary Croker; The Spectre of Barrochan (1888) – J. E. P. Muddock; A Mysterious Portrait (1889) – Mark Rutherford; The Old Portrait (1896) – Hume Nisbet; Old Applejoy's Ghost (1897) – Frank Richard Stockton; Jerry Bundler (1897) – W. W. Jacobs; Bills, M.D (1898) – John Kendrick Bangs.

The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 7

Lemon, Mark

Gunn, Alastair

Sala, George Augustus

Stretton, Hesba

Keon, Miles Gerald

Friswell, James Hain

Baring-Gould, Sabine

Bushby, Anne Sarah

Wimbourne Books

Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906) who also wrote under the pseudonym F. G. Tafford, was one of the most popular and influential writers of the Victorian period. She was born Charlotte Eliza Lawson Cowan in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland. The author of 56 books, novels and short stories, she was also part owner and editor of the St. James's Magazine, one of the most prestigious literary magazines of the 1860s. She was also the author of many ghost stories, publishing under the name of Mrs. J. H. Riddell. Her husband died in 1880 and Charlotte lived a lonely life thereafter until her she died from cancer in Ashford, Kent, England on 24 September 1906. Amongst her works are: The Moors and the Fens (1858), City and Suburb (1861), George Geith of Fen Court (1864), Above Suspicion (1876), Berna Boyle (1882), Mitre Court (1885) and The Head of the Firm (1892).

The Open Door

Contemporary

Dodo Pr

Product Description Charlotte Riddell’s The Uninhabited House (1875) tells the story of River Hall and the secrets that are hidden behind its doors. Within this haunted house, Riddell combines the supernatural with Victorian anxieties over stolen inheritance, crime, greed, and class mobility. This new Broadview Edition includes a detailed biography of Charlotte Riddell and illustrations from the original appearance of the novella in Routledge’s Magazine; it also includes Riddell’s ghost story “The Open Door” (1882), which serves as a useful companion text for The Uninhabited House. The contextual material in the edition highlights Victorian cultural, historical, and literary influences on Riddell’s text, including women’s contributions to the ghost story, print culture, and the development of supernatural fiction; the link between ghost stories and the holidays; and the haunted house, ghost hunting, and popular beliefs about ghosts in the Victorian era. Review “Melissa Edmundson has given us a well-supported edition of this haunted-house novel by an important Irish novelist who takes as her métier mid-century London―its clerks, suburbs, and shabby gentility. Those unfamiliar with Charlotte Riddell will find this a pleasure to read, and those who have wished to teach her work―and the long-form Victorian ghost story more broadly―will find this invaluable. A prolific and very successful writer, Riddell showcases her eye for detail and sense of humor in this, one of her most-loved novels.” ― Pamela K. Gilbert, University of Florida “The Uninhabited House is one of the best ghost stories of the nineteenth century―by one of the genre’s finest writers. While Charlotte Riddell was a bestselling and prolific novelist and short-story writer, she has been neglected and even ignored for decades and is only now attracting the kind of critical and scholarly attention that her work deserves. Edmundson’s comprehensive Introduction places both the author and her novel in relation to the reinvention of Christmas and the obsession with ghosts and haunted houses that were features of late Victorian life. The appendices provide a fascinating insight into the ways in which concerns about property and the preternatural were deeply intertwined in the late nineteenth century. This is a very welcome addition to Broadview’s extensive range of nineteenth-century texts.” ― Jarlath Killeen, Trinity College Dublin From the Back Cover Charlotte Riddell’s The Uninhabited House (1875) tells the story of River Hall and the secrets that are hidden behind its doors. Within this haunted house, Riddell combines the supernatural with Victorian anxieties over stolen inheritance, crime, greed, and class mobility. This new Broadview Edition includes a detailed biography of Charlotte Riddell and illustrations from the original appearance of the novella in Routledge’s Magazine; it also includes Riddell’s ghost story “The Open Door” (1882), which serves as a useful companion text for The Uninhabited House. The contextual material in the edition highlights Victorian cultural, historical, and literary influences on Riddell’s text, including women’s contributions to the ghost story, print culture, and the development of supernatural fiction; the link between ghost stories and the holidays; and the haunted house, ghost hunting, and popular beliefs about ghosts in the Victorian era. About the Author Melissa Edmundson is Senior Lecturer of English at Clemson University.

The Uninhabited House

Broadview Press

Charlotte Riddell - The Uninhabited House: ''All truth contains an echo of sadness''

Literary

Horse's Mouth

A collection of short ghost stories by Victorian writer Charlotte Riddell. Includes: Walnut-Tree House, The Open Door, Nut Bush Farm, Sandy the Tinker, and Old Mrs Jones. With their monstrous women and uncanny children, their tales of dissolution, greed and murder behind the facade of splendid houses, these stories will appeal to the modern aficionado of supernatural fiction.

Weird Stories

Victorian Secrets

Before Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Agents Mulder and Scully, and Carl Kolchak . . . Before Jules de Grandin, John Silence, and Carnacki the Ghost Finder . . . The roots of occult detective fiction reach as far back as ancient Rome, where two master plots emerged. The first involves a character whose courage and intelligence solves the mystery of a troubled spirit: a ghostly client. In the second, a character must investigate and vanquish a much more wicked supernatural foe: a demonic culprit. Showcasing E.T.A. Hoffmann, Charlotte Riddell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Machen, and other authors, Ghostly Clients &amp; Demonic Culprits charts the history of both plots, from antiquity to fully formed occult detectives in the early 1900s.

Ghostly Clients and Demonic Culprits: The Roots of Occult Detective Fiction

Hoffmann, E.T.A.

MACHEN, ARTHUR

Prasil, Tim

Conan, Doyle Arthur

Kipling., Rudyard

TAYLOR, Bayard

Brom Bones Books

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume Three

A new anthology of twenty ghostly tales of Yuletide terror, collected from rare Victorian periodicals 
Seeking to capitalize on the success of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), Victorian newspapers and magazines frequently featured ghost stories at Christmas time, and reading them by candlelight or the fireside became an annual tradition, a tradition Valancourt Books is pleased to continue with our series of Victorian Christmas ghost stories. This third volume contains twenty tales, most of them never before reprinted. They represent a mix of the diverse styles and themes common to Victorian ghost fiction and include works by once-popular authors like Ellen Wood and Charlotte Riddell as well as contributions from anonymous or wholly forgotten writers. This volume also features a new introduction by Prof. Simon Stern. 
“Before me, with the sickly light from the lantern shining right down upon it, was—a cloven hoof! Then the awfulness of the compact I had made came to my mind with terrible force ...” - Frederick Manley, “The Ghost of the Cross-Roads” 
“By the fireplace there was a large hideous pool of blood soaking into the carpet, and leaving ghastly stains around. I am not ashamed to confess that my brain reeled; the mysterious horror overcame me ...” - Lillie Harris, “19, Great Hanover Street” 
“A fearful white face comes to me; a horrible mask, with features drawn as in agony—ghastly, pale, hideous! Death or approaching death, violent death, written in every line. Every feature distorted. Eyes starting from the head. Thin lips moving and working—lips that are cursing, although I hear no sound.” - Hugh Conway, “A Dead Man’s Face”

Wood, Ellen

Valancourt Books

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