Other editions of book The Haunted House

Collins among its contributors,The Haunted House is an ingenious tale of the supernatural with touches of pure Dickensian comedy. When the narrator espies a deserted house from his railway carriage, he cannot resist the challenge of taking up residence in a place no one else will inhabit. Local legend has terrified the nearby villagers, and they, in turn, convince his servants to abandon ship. Undaunted, he and his sister invite a group of friends to join them. Having shared out the household tasks, the guests are then commissioned to rout out the supernatural from their respective rooms. On Twelfth Night they meet to share their ghostly tales. The result is a feast of lively and bizarre storytelling, uniting the finest in Victorian literary talent. "As a document of self-revelation, The Haunted House is of the utmost significance for anyone interested in exploring the genius of Charles Dickens."

The Haunted House by Charles Dickens, 1859. Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for twenty years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms.

The Haunted House (+Biography and Bibliography) (Glossy Cover Finish):Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.

"The Haunted House" (1859) by Charles Dickens is actually a compilation work, with contributions from Hesba Stretton, George Augustus Sala, Adelaide Anne Procter, ​Wilkie Collins, and Elizabeth Gaskell. Each writer, including Dickens, writes one “chapter” of the tale. The premise is that a group of people has come to a well-known haunted house to stay for a period of time, experience whatever supernatural elements might be there to experience, then regroup at the end of their stay to share their stories. Each author represents a specific person within the tale and, while the genre is that of the ghost story.

The Haunted House (+Biography and Bibliography) (Matte Cover Finish):Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.

The house's reputation for being haunted has caused it to become "an avoided house," and although the narrator decides to rent it for six months (from October to March) and live there with his spinster sister (Patty), they cannot retain any servants due to a plethora of bizarre house noises. Therefore, by mid-November, Patty suggests that she and John "take the house wholly and solely into our own hands" and live without servants, with the exception of Bottles the stable-man who is deaf and therefore not bothered by the haunted noises.