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Interest in supernatural phenomena was high during Charles Dickens’ lifetime. He had always loved a good ghost story himself, particularly at Christmas time, and was open-minded, willing to accept, and indeed put to the test, the existence of spirits.
His natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twenty stories presented here, which include his celebrated A Christmas Carol, the full range of his gothic talents can be seen.
Chilling as some of these stories are, Dickens has managed to inject characteristically grotesque comedy as he writes of revenge, insanity, pre-cognition and dream visions, he indulges also in some debunking of contemporary credulity.
About The Author
Charles John Huffham Dickens was born in 1812 in Landport, Hampshire, his father was a clerk in the Naval pay office.In 1814 the family moved to London and then to Chatham. In 1824 his father John was sent to Marshalsea debtor’s prison. During this period Dickens was forced to work in a blacking factory, an intensely unhappy time, which was reflected in some of his early works. He worked as an office boy, and as a shorthand reporter in the Commons. Between 1828 and 1836 he acquired a solid reputation for his journalistic prowess, contributing to a wide variety of periodicals etc. His career as a writer of fiction began in 1833 when some short stories and essays appeared in print.
He married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 and fathered ten children. They separated in 1858. It is widely believed that Dickens preferred Catherine’s sister, Mary, who lived with them and died tragically at the age of seventeen in 1837. Another of Catherine’s sisters, Georgina, moved into the family home and he fell in love with her. He also had a long relationship with an actress Ellen Ternan, whom he met in the late 1850s.
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