"Five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world,
and still it is undecided whether or not there has even been an instance
of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is
against it; but all belief is for it." --Samuel Johnson
Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of life. In Britain, every town,
village, and great house has a spectral resident, and their enduring
popularity 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. The ghost is no less than the mirror of the times.
Organized chronologically, this new cultural history features a dazzling
range of artists and writers, including William Hogarth, William Blake,
Henry Fuseli, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Susan Hiller
and Jeremy Deller; John Donne, William Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Daniel
Defoe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Wilkie
Collins, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Muriel Spark, Hilary Mantel, and
Sarah Waters.
