The reason for the extraordinary and lasting success of The Woman in Black is twofold. She was already well-known as a novelist by the Eighties, having won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971 for I’m The King of the Castle and the 1972 Whitbread award for The Bird of Night, but it was her ninth novel, and her first ghost story, that remains her most famous book today, perhaps unjustly overshadowing a distinguished career that has seen her write dozens of fiction, non-fiction and children’s titles, to say nothing of short stories and drama. Hill began her writing career in 1961, publishing her debut book The Enclosure while still a student at King’s College, London. The Woman in Black’s power lies in its simplicity and ability to provoke giddy terror One thinks of MR James, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and many more, including, inevitably, Susan Hill’s 1983 novel, The Woman in Black. And just as literary and social presentations of the festive season owe something to Dickens and A Christmas Carol, so most British ghost stories seem to be related to the Victorian era, whether written then or set in that period.
As the nights draw in and Christmas approaches, the idea of a chilling tale told by the fireside is as much of a seasonal prerequisite as rich food, drinking too much and revelatory family arguments. Although Halloween is now past, there is something enduring about the tradition of the ghost story.
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