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Great Ghost Stories — cover
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Aeneas Press edition

Great Ghost Stories

An anthology

The book, and the century it came out of.

A gathering of the ghost story at its height: Le Fanu, Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, Mrs Oliphant, Dickens’s signalman on the line below the tunnel mouth. The Victorians produced these by the hundred for Christmas numbers, and the best of them survive because the machinery is domestic — a bell, a stairs, a letter, a man doing his job. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Webb and Bernard among them.

Ghost stories lend themselves well to fiction.
The first sentence of Great Ghost Stories
A note on this edition

Great Ghost Stories, by Various, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.

It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.

The edition
Kind
Collection
Format
Ebook
Extent
about 256 pages
Reading time
about 5 hours
Illustrations
Full-page plates, credited
Text
Complete, unabridged
Language
en
This edition
2026
ISBN
9785501006201
The plates

60 paintings are bound into this edition

Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.

Conway Castle, William Webb
Conway Castle William Webb 1880
Dusk in the Rushes (Alexandria Bay), George Inness
Dusk in the Rushes (Alexandria Bay) George Inness 1880
The Pond of Ville-d’Avray, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
The Pond of Ville-d’Avray Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot 1865
Landscape at Le Valhermeil, Auvers-sur-Oise, Camille Pissarro
Landscape at Le Valhermeil, Auvers-sur-Oise Camille Pissarro 1880
Landschap met schepen op een rivier in de avond, Charles-François Daubigny
Landschap met schepen op een rivier in de avond Charles-François Daubigny 1866
Winterlandschap, Johannes Franciscus Hoppenbrouwers
Winterlandschap Johannes Franciscus Hoppenbrouwers 1865
The setting

A page from this edition

Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.

A page of Great Ghost Stories as set for this edition
The opening of a chapter
A page of Great Ghost Stories as set for this edition
A page where a plate falls

Both photographed from the finished volume.

Colophon

Great Ghost Stories, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Gothic & Horror shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.

Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501006201, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.

Before you buy

Questions readers ask

Is this the whole of Great Ghost Stories?
Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
What exactly did you change?
The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Various's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
Are the pictures really in the book?
Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
How long is it?
About 256 pages, which is roughly about 5 hours of reading.
What do I actually get?
An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
If this one suits you
Great Ghost Stories
$6.99
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