FREE THE WOMAN IN BLACK AND OTHER GHOST STORIES: THE COLLECTED GHOST STORIES OF SUSAN HILL PDF Susan Hill | 416 pages | 24 Sep 2015 | Profile Books Ltd | 9781781255520 | English | London, United Kingdom Susan Hill - Literature She was educated at Scarborough Convent School and at grammar school in Coventry, before reading English at King's College, London, graduating in and becoming a Fellow in Her first novel, The Enclosurewas published in when she was still a student. She worked as a freelance journalist between andpublishing her third novel, Gentleman and Ladiesin In she started her own publishing company, Long Barn Books, editing and publishing a quarterly literary journal, Books and Companyin T he Woman in Blacka Victorian ghost story, was successfully adapted for stage and television and is one of Susan Hill's most commercial successes. Her recent novels include the series of Simon Serrailler crime novels and various further ghost stories. Susan Hill is also the author of two volumes of memoir, The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Yearabout her life in rural Oxfordshire during the s, and Familyin which she writes about her early life in Scarborough. She has also written radio plays, a number of books of non-fiction and has edited several anthologies of short stories including two volumes of The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Storiespublished in and She moved back to the sea, but this time to North Norfolk, in Above all though it has been Hill's novels - of which there are now more than a dozen - that have captured the public's imagination. Hill has a talent for storytelling, for producing what one Guardian reviewer has called 'a rattling good yarn'. A skilled editor of the work of others see, for example, her two volume The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Storiesit is clear that Hill applies those editorial skills just as rigorously to her own prose. As a result, her writing reveals an enviable capacity for generating and maintaining suspense through the deployment of fast moving, agile plots. That one of her best loved novels, The The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories: The Collected Ghost Stories of Susan Hill in Blackis still running as an adaptation in London's West End, some 25 years after it was first published! Viewed as a whole, certain patterns, images and devices can be seen recurring through Hill's varied fiction of the past forty years. Indeed, it is the repetition and recognition of familiar metaphors and tropes that constitutes one of the pleasures of her work. Typically Hill's writings revolve around wealthy, well-to-do families of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Even her novels set in modern times have a 'days gone by' feel about them, such as The Various Haunts of Menwhich was shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Somewhat like an Inspector Morse narrative, The Various Haunts of Men is set in a small cathedral town, closeted from the modernity of the city. Compared, in a positive fashion, with the serial detective fiction of P. Many of Hill's fictional families are dysfunctional, broken, or about to be broken and the protagonists appear isolated, or awkward in the company of others. Many of them occupy haunted properties, such as The Man in the Picture and her recent novel for younger readers, The Battle for Gullywith These lofty figures explain something of the seductiveness of Hill's prose, which flirts at times with a romantic image of an The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories: The Collected Ghost Stories of Susan Hill England, a sentimental vision of the country before or during the war and imperial decline. However, this is only half the story. Hill's novels are rarely, if ever, conventionally 'romantic', filled as they are with darker, more disturbing images of death, loss and haunting. Hill's early novel, I'm the King of the Castle is typical here in terms of its combination of an older, seemingly innocent Victorian England with an account of childhood greed, malevolence and evil. Hooper and his son Edmund. Things start to go badly wrong when a mother and her son Kingshaw move in. To Edmund, Kingshaw Hill has a thing about loaded names! I'm the King of the Castle is a disturbing novel about the fears and fantasies of childhood, a gothic tale brimming with locked rooms, attic, moonlight and moths. It has been pointed out on more than one occasion that the darker side of Hill's work is informed by the tragic circumstances surrounding her own life, including the death of her first partner, second child and her own near-death experience Hill is anaphylactic. Certainly childhood is a prevailing theme that haunts Hill's fiction, from I'm the King of the Castle to her most recent collection of short stories, The Boy who Taught the Beekeper to Readwhere a string of young boys and girls develop often unsettling relationships with older people. In the Springtime of the Year is a semi-autobiographical novel about loss. This subtle work of fiction describes the sense of loneliness and isolation felt by Ruth following the sudden death of her husband. Shortly after the publication of this melancholy, moving text, Hill announced her retirement from writing. However, a decade later she made a memorable return to fiction in the form of The Woman in Black. The Woman in Black is essentially a ghost story. Like a number of her books, it borrows imaginatively from the styles and conventions of the nineteenth century realist novel. Many of the images and themes of the book are drawn from this tradition and will be familiar to the 'knowing' reader: the city as a site of disease, for instance. The text self-consciously signals its literary heritage through its title a playful reversal of Wilkie Collins's Victorian ghost story, The Woman in White and through its references and allusions to Dickens's Great Expectations : 'I had expected it [the late Mrs. Drablow's house] to be a shrine to the memory of her husband of so short a time, like the house of poor Miss Havisham'. The Woman in Black is by no means simply a faithful reproduction The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories: The Collected Ghost Stories of Susan Hill the 'past masters' however. The compressed prose and the nuanced characterisation, along with the clever use of silence and the unsaid suggest that this is also very much a modern The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories: The Collected Ghost Stories of Susan Hill about modern times. In the s Susan Hill wrote a number of novels which built upon the characteristic themes of her earlier work. InMrs De Winter was published as a sequel to Daphne Du Maurier's classic, Rebeccafurther demonstrating her ability to work within The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories: The Collected Ghost Stories of Susan Hill beyond traditional literary styles and conventions. Other novels, such as Air and Angels and The Mist in the Mirror describe the unsettling, life changing encounters of respectable gentlemen. Meanwhile, her most recent novel, The Service of Clouds contains a dual narrative, that shifts between the world of a mother and her son. Through The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories: The Collected Ghost Stories of Susan Hill echoes and parallels that emerge between their lives we are given one of Hill's most perceptive and sensitive explorations into the psychology of family relationships. 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If you have concerns about how we have used your personal information, you also have the right to complain to a privacy regulator. For detailed information, please refer to the privacy section of our website or contact your local British Council office. We will keep your information for a period of 7 years from the time of collection. Susan Hill. Born: Scarborough, England. Agents: Sheil Land Associates Ltd. Critical perspective Bibliography Awards. Critical perspective Susan Elizabeth Hill is a prolific writer: the author of numerous novels, collections of short stories, non-fiction and children's fiction as well as a respected reviewer, critic, broadcaster and editor. Dr James Procter, Bibliography Awards Sign Up to the Newsletter. Enter your email address to subscribe:. Top 10 ghost stories | Fiction | The Guardian Susan Hill is an English author who has written mainly mystery and thriller novels and books related to fiction and literature genre. His works also include non-fiction and children-oriented books as well. Susan was born in the year in Scarborough, North Yorkshire and has been pursuing her writing career for the past five decades. She has received many awards for her contribution to literature. Susan attended the Scarborough Convent School and was interested in literature and theater since her childhood days.