Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) towers over the Victorian novel, and his ghost stories, above all A Christmas Carol, with its time-spanning spirits, are among the most beloved supernatural fiction in English. ‘The Signal-Man’ is a masterpiece of the uncanny, and his fascination with mesmerism and the macabre threads through his work. A foundational influence on the Christmas-ghost tradition and the literary uses of the fantastic.