The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories
by Michael Cox (Editor)
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"Ghosts are resilient creatures. They thrive in an atmosphere of candlelight and decay, in antique manors, graveyards and cloisters and yet, as this anthology triumphantly demonstrates, they are equally at home under the harsh light of the electric bulb. The advent of the motor car and the invention of the telephone have merely tested their ingenuity, and exercised the talents of a host of writers. The fractures and schisms of the twentieth-century are reflected in the current proliferation show more of literary genres, and in the marvellous variety that a single genre can embrace. Leading exponents of ghost fiction such as M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood are joined by authors such as Scott Fitzgerald, A.S. Byatt, William Trevor, and Alison Lurie; women, in particular, have embraced the form with skill and versatility. As well as the returning dead there are haunted typewriters, malevolent furniture, and urban ghosts, phantoms of smoke an[d] soot. Occasionally with humour, but more often with obliquity and restraint, these stories both entrance and terrify. This collection shows how ghost stories have successfully utilized the landscapes, technologies, and consciousness of contemporary life to adapt to the modern age with imagination and flair. Distinctive and gripping, these stories will linger long in the memory"--Jacket. show lessTags
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Author Information
Michael Cox was born on August 30 1948 in Northamptonshire, England. In 1989 he started work at the Oxford University Press. In 1983, Cox published his first book, a biography M. R. James, a Victorian ghost story writer. Between 1983 and 1997 he compiled and edited several anthologies of Victorian short stories for Oxford University Press. His show more first novel, The Meaning of Night, was published in 2006. Michael Cox died of cancer on March 31, 2009. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Contains
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Horror
- DDC/MDS
- 823.0873308091 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Horror and ghost fiction Ghost fiction Anthologies
- LCC
- PR1309 .G5 .O945 — Language and Literature English English Literature Collections of English literature
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- 75
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- 420,529
- Rating
- (4.06)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
