"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.

Autorentext

Susan Owens is an art historian and curator. Former curator of paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, she writes and lectures widely on British art.

Klappentext

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.

Zusammenfassung
Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of British life. Their enduring popularity in literature, art, folklore and film attests to their continuing power to fascinate, terrify and inspire. In this broad cultural history, Susan Owens reveals what these spirits and apparitions can tell us about our culture and about ourselves.