Long winter nights, cold evenings around a fire, and an age-old and surprisingly widespread belief that spirits roamed around Christmas… these are the ingredients which likely led to the usage of telling ghost stories during the festive season. In the Victorian era, this tradition took a literary turn. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is, essentially, a work of supernatural fiction, as are the rest of his Christmas books (except, perhaps, The Battle of Life). But Dickens was hardly an exception, and there were myriad authors, some better known than others, who contributed to the genre. This tradition culminated in the stories of M.R. James (1862 – 1936), originally conceived as Christmas Eve entertainments to be read out to friends and later published in critically acclaimed collections. In the 1970s, the producers of the “BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas” series turned to “Monty”’s stories for inspiration, cementing the link between Christmas and ghosts in the popular imagination.

Devotees of supernatural fiction have long been aware of this connection but, for some strange reason (possibly, due to the hype surrounding Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of The Mezzotint for the BBC), it seems to have been suddenly “rediscovered” by mainstream publications around Christmas 2021: from the Guardian to the Spectator, from the History Channel website to the religious journal First Things. In a round-up of “ten best Christmas books”, Esquire deservedly mentions Valancourt Books’ collection of “Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories”. I say “deservedly” because the book featured in the Esquire article is actually just the first of a several volumes of Victorian festive chillers issued by this publisher. The series is currently in its fifth instalment and, along the way, Valancourt have unearthed and revived many forgotten stories by obscure and less-obscure author.

Volume 4, edited by Christopher Philippo, provided me with plenty of ghostly fun over Christmas 2021. Admittedly, Philippo gives a rather generous interpretation of “Victorian”. He does not concentrate on British authors, as the term “Victorian” would suggest, but instead draws material from US magazines and newspapers of the 19th Century, in which a parallel Yuletide custom of ghostly fiction appears to have been equally thriving. It is this American context which made this volume special to me. It is clear, when considering the collection holistically, that US authors were seeking to create (or recreate) a homegrown repertoire of supernatural fiction for a country which was still relatively young. And so, we find the traditions of the ghost story and the wider “Gothic” tradition transplanted to distinctly American settings, from the New Orleans of Joseph Holt Ingraham’s “The Green Huntsman” to Gold-rush era San Francisco in F.H. Brunell’s “The Ghostly Christmas Gift” to Porto Rico in Hezekiah Butterworth’s “Camel Bells or The Haunted Sentry Box of San Cristobal”. It is also interesting to note the multicultural influences at work here, with immigrant Continental traditions providing a distinctly un-English feel to some of the stories (for instance, “The Werwolves” is clearly inspired by French legends on the loup-garou). Apart from Robert W. Chambers, known to aficionados of the weird tale as the author of The King in Yellow, the featured writers practically forgotten, even though some of them (such as Lucy A. Randall and Julian Hawthorne, son of the better-known Nathaniel) were widely published during their lifetime.

Philippo casts his net wide and, apart from the stories, also includes an early example of flash fiction (the surprisingly contemporary-sounding “Desuetude”), verse (including a Jack-in-the-Box-shaped poem by HC Dodge), and perhaps more strikingly, several unusual news items from newspapers of the era, often with a garish element. This captivating and entertaining collection is complemented by an opening essay by the editor and by brief but informative introductions to each of the pieces.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/Valancourt-Book-of-Victorian-Ghost-St... ( )

Long winter nights, cold evenings around a fire, and an age-old and surprisingly widespread belief that spirits roamed around Christmas… these are the ingredients which likely led to the usage of telling ghost stories during the festive season. In the Victorian era, this tradition took a literary turn. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is, essentially, a work of supernatural fiction, as are the rest of his Christmas books (except, perhaps, The Battle of Life). But Dickens was hardly an exception, and there were myriad authors, some better known than others, who contributed to the genre. This tradition culminated in the stories of M.R. James (1862 – 1936), originally conceived as Christmas Eve entertainments to be read out to friends and later published in critically acclaimed collections. In the 1970s, the producers of the “BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas” series turned to “Monty”’s stories for inspiration, cementing the link between Christmas and ghosts in the popular imagination.

Devotees of supernatural fiction have long been aware of this connection but, for some strange reason (possibly, due to the hype surrounding Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of The Mezzotint for the BBC), it seems to have been suddenly “rediscovered” by mainstream publications around Christmas 2021: from the Guardian to the Spectator, from the History Channel website to the religious journal First Things. In a round-up of “ten best Christmas books”, Esquire deservedly mentions Valancourt Books’ collection of “Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories”. I say “deservedly” because the book featured in the Esquire article is actually just the first of a several volumes of Victorian festive chillers issued by this publisher. The series is currently in its fifth instalment and, along the way, Valancourt have unearthed and revived many forgotten stories by obscure and less-obscure author.

Volume 4, edited by Christopher Philippo, provided me with plenty of ghostly fun over Christmas 2021. Admittedly, Philippo gives a rather generous interpretation of “Victorian”. He does not concentrate on British authors, as the term “Victorian” would suggest, but instead draws material from US magazines and newspapers of the 19th Century, in which a parallel Yuletide custom of ghostly fiction appears to have been equally thriving. It is this American context which made this volume special to me. It is clear, when considering the collection holistically, that US authors were seeking to create (or recreate) a homegrown repertoire of supernatural fiction for a country which was still relatively young. And so, we find the traditions of the ghost story and the wider “Gothic” tradition transplanted to distinctly American settings, from the New Orleans of Joseph Holt Ingraham’s “The Green Huntsman” to Gold-rush era San Francisco in F.H. Brunell’s “The Ghostly Christmas Gift” to Porto Rico in Hezekiah Butterworth’s “Camel Bells or The Haunted Sentry Box of San Cristobal”. It is also interesting to note the multicultural influences at work here, with immigrant Continental traditions providing a distinctly un-English feel to some of the stories (for instance, “The Werwolves” is clearly inspired by French legends on the loup-garou). Apart from Robert W. Chambers, known to aficionados of the weird tale as the author of The King in Yellow, the featured writers practically forgotten, even though some of them (such as Lucy A. Randall and Julian Hawthorne, son of the better-known Nathaniel) were widely published during their lifetime.

Philippo casts his net wide and, apart from the stories, also includes an early example of flash fiction (the surprisingly contemporary-sounding “Desuetude”), verse (including a Jack-in-the-Box-shaped poem by HC Dodge), and perhaps more strikingly, several unusual news items from newspapers of the era, often with a garish element. This captivating and entertaining collection is complemented by an opening essay by the editor and by brief but informative introductions to each of the pieces.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/Valancourt-Book-of-Victorian-Ghost-St... ( )