Walter de la Mare and the Modern Ghost Story

This chapter discusses the contribution of Walter de la Mare’s short stories to the development of the modern ghost story. It notes their shared characteristics with three different approaches to the form, by writers such as M R James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. But it also identifies how de la Mare’s stories differ from these. It proposes that the defining quality of de la Mare’s stories is a concern with absence. It also argues that while there is no commitment to any system of belief (or unbelief) in the stories, there is a hesitant suggestion of unused or under-used psychic faculties. It concludes that in de la Mare’s hands the ghost story enables us to ask profound questions about the self, our place in the world, and the search for meaning.