Friday, November 18, 2011

Author Countries for the Top 10 Ghost Stories

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In the last post I laid out the Top 10 ghost stories for the 1st half of the 19th century. Just like I did for The Best Horror Short Stories 1800-1849, I thought it would be fun to list the author countries. Here it goes:

10. The Ghostly Visiter; or, The Mysterious Invalid (1833)

Anonymous author, likely from England as it was published in a "Penny Dreadful" in London.

9. The Tapestried Chamber (1827)

Sir Walter Scott was Scottish.

8. Adventure of the German Student (1831)

Washington Irving was American.

7. The Old Maid in the Winding Sheet (1837)

Nathaniel Hawthorne was American.

6. The Spectral Ship (1828)

Wilhelm Hauff was German.

5. A Night in a Haunted House (1848)

This anonymous ghost story appeared in a Dublin magazine so the author was likely Irish.

4. The Mask of the Red Death (1842)

Edgar Allan Poe was American.

3. A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family (1839)

Joseph Sheridan le Fanu was Irish.

2. The Deaf and Dumb Girl (1839)

This anonymous story was translated from the French.

1. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1819)

Washington Irving was American.

That means four of the Top 10 scary ghost stories for this period came from Americans, two from Ireland, one from Scotland, one from Germany, one from France and one from England.

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