Four Ghost Stories

Mary Louisa MolesworthProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.7

Word count: 194K words
Chapters: 20

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Four Ghost Stories by Mrs. MolesworthAuthor: Molesworth, Mrs., 1839-1921,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 19, 2010

Editor's review

Mrs. Molesworth was a prolific Victorian woman writer known for children's literature and domestic stories; this collection, Four Ghost Stories, is a lesser-known short-fiction foray into the supernatural. The four tales are brief, building atmosphere through suggestion, rumor, and subtle wrongness in everyday settings rather than explicit gore, and they carry a clear echo of the old Gothic. Their readability lies in restraint: the stories unfold within the framework of daily life, quietly embedding the abnormal in familiar domestic spaces, so that reading them feels like a quiet chill. For readers studying Victorian popular literature or the ghost-story tradition, this is a useful and readily available sample; for general readers, it suits being read one story at a time in the evening or in spare moments, with no need for continuity. Note that the work is early, the pacing is slow, and the horror is understated—readers expecting strong shocks may find it tame.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy traditional English ghost stories and Gothic atmosphere
Readers and students studying Victorian popular literature
Readers who want to practice reading with short English stories

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking strong scares and fast-paced horror
Beginner readers unaccustomed to old-fashioned English narrative pacing

Reading tips

Read one story at a time and pause to savor each rather than reading all four straight through.
Watch for the anomalies in everyday details and appreciate the author's restrained use of suggestion.
Read at night or in a quiet setting to better match the atmosphere.
After reading, briefly retell the plot to check whether you caught the key hints.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Are the four stories connected?

They are independent short stories with no continuous characters or plot; you can read them in any order, or pick just one or two.

How scary are the stories?

They lean toward understated psychological and atmospheric horror, creating unease through suggestion and setting rather than explicit violence or gore—suitable for readers who like gentle thrills.

Is it suitable for English learners?

The short length is an advantage, but the language is nineteenth-century English with old-fashioned sentence patterns and vocabulary. Readers with some foundation who are willing to look up words can try it; complete beginners may struggle.

Comments

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About the author

Mary Louisa Molesworth Author · British · 1839–1921

Mrs. Molesworth (1839–1921), born Mary Louisa Molesworth, was an English writer of children's literature in the Victorian era. She was born in Rotterdam in 1839 and died in London in 1921, and was a prolific author; this site holds 57 of her works. Her representative books include The Cuckoo Clock, The Tapestry Room: A Child's Romance, Four Ghost Stories, The Carved Lions, Grandmother Dear: A Book for Boys and Girls, Christmas-Tree Land, and The Palace in the Garden. Her works are often classed as inspirational coming-of-age stories, usually centering on children and unfolding in settings where domestic life and fantasy intertwine. Her warm, delicate style combines imagination with a sense of everyday reality, and she has been called "the Jane Austen of the nursery." Public information is limited, but the sheer number of her works shows her lasting influence on child readers of her time.