“I looked at it over a low laurel hedge growing inside an open paling about four feet high. Riddell can turn her hand to description as well: For many Victorian readers, uncertain finances were as scary as the ghosts and Riddell weaves the two together. Financial volatility and risk are at the centre of a number of the tales. There are often economic issues at stake and Riddell points to the futility of both miserliness and overspending.

Riddell shows the influence of the Bronte’s (particularly Jane Eyre in the last story).Īlthough these are ghost stories, there is little horror, the ghosts often point and try to correct past wrongs rather than shriek and howl. Ghost stories can give the author licence to push the boundaries of fiction by exploring female sexuality, property ownership and the strangeness of others. In her introduction to the collection Emma Liggins points out that the two Married Women’s Property Acts had recently been enacted and there was increasing debates about the rights of women. Many of the ghosts are female, sometimes (but not always) women who have been wronged. Riddell liked to write haunted house tales, usually houses that were cheap with local reputations, rented or purchased by the narrator who then discovers why said house was cheap. The Victorian readership was very interested in supernatural tales. She wrote for the popular market and was the first pensioner of the Society of Authors.

Five of her novels are also ghost stories. The hauntings are often linked to past injustices.Ĭharlotte Riddell was a prolific Victorian writer, producing over fifty novels and a number of short stories. It isn’t always a house that is haunted, in one it is a farm. This collection certainly fits into the gothic category with rambling old houses recalcitrant furniture and apparitions. This is from a publishing house called Victorian Secrets which publishes books from and about the nineteenth century, some of which might otherwise be difficult to find. A collection of six Victorian ghost stories.

Weird stories charlotte riddell