Whether there is any necessary link between a devotion to afternoon sweets, queuing, and windowbox gardening on the one hand, and a passion for the ghost story on the other, would be hard to say. But one can assert without question about that puzzling thing, the English national temper, that it shows a deep affinity for the tale sprung from a restless grave.

In the last two centuries, beginning with Sir Walter Scott, the ghost story has flourished in England with an artistry and range probably unmatched throughout the world. Dickens, George Eliot, Gaskell, Hardy, Kipling, Wells, de la Mare, Maugham, and Elizabeth Bowen all composed ghost stories. And if in recent years the genre has not stirred the catholic wealth of talents it once did, the ghost story in England continues to attract both sophisticated readers and discerning critical regard to an extent unknown in America. Last year saw the appearance in England of a host of well produced and for the most part commendably sober-looking volumes, among them The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, The Ghost Stories of M. R. James, The Mammoth Book of Classic Chills, E. F. Benson’s Tales of an Empty House, and The Ghost Hunter’s Guide, by Peter Underwood, who according to the book’s dust jacket is president of the Ghost Club (founded 1856).¹ These volumes come swaying lightly on the heels of The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories and The Penguin Book of Horror