My Goodreads review: The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by Tara Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a holiday group read for Literary Darkness, the Goodreads group I'm most active in. Though it made for some great discussions, my experience with this anthology was more "literary" than "darkness."

Editor Tara Moore does an excellent job of providing notes for each of these tales -- all quite authentically Victorian, mostly from holiday gift publications of the period. She also offers a fine introduction to the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas in England, which helped my understanding of this very mixed bag of fiction. The stories themselves range from a few truly unsettling supernatural ones to some which can best be described as Scooby-Doos (i.e., mundane & somewhat fake phenomena masquerading as hauntings). Some, intended for younger readers, almost came with morals attached

I enjoyed the traditional holiday flavor of this anthology, but was very glad I'd taken time with the introduction first. This one is recommended primarily to Dickens fans & other Anglophiles who crave that full-on holly & ivy experience, or perhaps for those interested in the Victorian society that spawned a taste for these tales.






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