The Haunted House (story)
Encyclopedia
The Haunted House is a story published in 1859 for the weekly periodical All the Year Round
. It was "Conducted by Charles Dickens
", with contributions from others. It is a "portmanteau" story, with Dickens
writing the opening and closing stories, framing stories by Dickens himself and five other authors:
"The Mortals in the House" (Charles Dickens)
"The Ghost in the Clock Room" (Hesba Stretton
)
"The Ghost in the Double Room" (George Augustus Sala)
"The Ghost in the Picture Room" (Adelaide Anne Procter
)
"The Ghost in the Cupboard Room" (Wilkie Collins
)
"The Ghost in Master B's Room" (Charles Dickens)
"The Ghost in the Garden Room" (Elizabeth Gaskell
)
"The Ghost in the Corner Room" (Charles Dickens)
The story appeared in the Extra Christmas Number on 13 December 1859. Dickens began a tradition of Christmas publications with A Christmas Carol
in 1843 and his Christmas stories soon became a national institution. The Haunted House was his 1859 offering.
Dickens's opening story, The Mortals in the House, is the strongest of the collection and demonstrates his mastery of storytelling and characterisation. When the narrator sees a deserted house from his railway carriage he becomes determined to take up residence there. However, the house is said to be haunted and the servants gradually become agitated. The narrator sends them away and invites a group of his friends to stay with him and fend for themselves.
On Christmas Eve
the friends arrive with the aim of discovering evidence of the supernatural. Secluded in their rooms for the holiday, the friends agree to keep silent about any ghostly experiences until they gather on Twelfth Night.
The ghosts the characters see have no connection with the house, and are not even really ghosts; the stories are of injustice, terror, or regret.
The tales are all very different, but each has an element of the strange and scary. Some of the house guests have heard stories from ghosts while others have had out-of-body experiences. Wilkie Collins tells a seafaring story of Spanish pirates and the torment of a candle that, as it burns, takes the narrator ever closer to explosion and death. Dickens himself contributes The Ghost in Master B's Room, a very peculiar tale of the ghost of innocence that hints at the author’s own feelings of melancholy. Elizabeth Gaskell contributes a strong story of working people in the north of England. The stories by the other authors are adequate. The closing story, The Ghost in the Corner Room, is again by Dickens.
Today, "The Haunted House of 1859" is one of the attractions at Dickens World
in Chatham in Kent
.
All the Year Round
All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. Edited by Dickens, it was the direct successor to his previous publication Household Words, abandoned due to...
. It was "Conducted by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
", with contributions from others. It is a "portmanteau" story, with Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
writing the opening and closing stories, framing stories by Dickens himself and five other authors:
"The Mortals in the House" (Charles Dickens)
"The Ghost in the Clock Room" (Hesba Stretton
Hesba Stretton
Hesba Stretton was the pen name of Sarah Smith , an English writer of children's books. She concocted the name from the initials of her five siblings and the name of a neighbouring village.-Early life:...
)
"The Ghost in the Double Room" (George Augustus Sala)
"The Ghost in the Picture Room" (Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked on behalf of a number of causes, most prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. Procter never married, and some of her poetry has prompted...
)
"The Ghost in the Cupboard Room" (Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...
)
"The Ghost in Master B's Room" (Charles Dickens)
"The Ghost in the Garden Room" (Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
)
"The Ghost in the Corner Room" (Charles Dickens)
The story appeared in the Extra Christmas Number on 13 December 1859. Dickens began a tradition of Christmas publications with A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
in 1843 and his Christmas stories soon became a national institution. The Haunted House was his 1859 offering.
Dickens's opening story, The Mortals in the House, is the strongest of the collection and demonstrates his mastery of storytelling and characterisation. When the narrator sees a deserted house from his railway carriage he becomes determined to take up residence there. However, the house is said to be haunted and the servants gradually become agitated. The narrator sends them away and invites a group of his friends to stay with him and fend for themselves.
On Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...
the friends arrive with the aim of discovering evidence of the supernatural. Secluded in their rooms for the holiday, the friends agree to keep silent about any ghostly experiences until they gather on Twelfth Night.
The ghosts the characters see have no connection with the house, and are not even really ghosts; the stories are of injustice, terror, or regret.
The tales are all very different, but each has an element of the strange and scary. Some of the house guests have heard stories from ghosts while others have had out-of-body experiences. Wilkie Collins tells a seafaring story of Spanish pirates and the torment of a candle that, as it burns, takes the narrator ever closer to explosion and death. Dickens himself contributes The Ghost in Master B's Room, a very peculiar tale of the ghost of innocence that hints at the author’s own feelings of melancholy. Elizabeth Gaskell contributes a strong story of working people in the north of England. The stories by the other authors are adequate. The closing story, The Ghost in the Corner Room, is again by Dickens.
Today, "The Haunted House of 1859" is one of the attractions at Dickens World
Dickens World
Dickens World is a themed attraction located at Chatham Dockyard in the English county of Kent. Privately funded, it cost £62 million to create, and was opened to the public on 25 May 2007.-The concept:...
in Chatham in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
.
External links
- Complete text of The Haunted House
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/dec/14/classics.charlesdickens'Spooky tales by the master and friends' The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
14 December 2002] - The Haunted House on Victorianweb.org
- http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FMQ-AAAAYAAJ&dq=The+Haunted+House+1859+dickens&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=-fwIBot2X9&sig=CMoWlx1Riq1jVm9JCHdPKJw4peY&hl=en&ei=i7reSs-zNsqF4Qbg3ogf&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false'The Christmas Numbers of All the Year Round: 1859. The Haunted House by Charles Dickens' Google BooksGoogle Book SearchGoogle Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October...
]