Author(s): Susan Owens

Mythology

Now in paperback, this is a new cultural history of the ghost--one of the most popular and pervasive subjects worldwide. Spanning from the medieval period to today, the book includes a wide range of artists and writers, including Hogarth, Blake, Rossetti, Shakespeare, Pepys, Shelley, and Dickens. Contemporary figures such as Muriel Spark, Hilary Mantel, and Jeremy Deller are also featured. The enduring popularity of ghosts in literature, art, folklore, and film attests to their continuing power to fascinate, terrify, and inspire. Our conceptions of ghosts--the fears they provoke, the forms they take--are connected to the conventions and beliefs of each particular era, from the marauding undead of the Middle Ages to the psychologically charged presences of our own age.  

Staff recommendation - Now here’s a tome for dark winter nights... I’ve been enjoying dipping into this fascinating history of ghosts – how they’ve been depicted over almost 2000 years in literature and art, the tales we tell about them, the places they’re found, what they mean and what they say about us. Great illustrations too, stretching from old illustrated manuscripts (the three living and the three dead, very popular in the Black Death!) up time the psychic researchers of the 20th Century. Is it me or has the room just got colder...? — Nic