Audiobook · read by volunteers
Open Door and The Portrait
Margaret O. Oliphant (1828–1897)
Read by Katie Gibboney, redabrus · 6 chapters · 3 h 32
About the book
Margaret Oliphant wrote some of the most haunting Victorian ghost stories, and this recording brings together two of them, subtitled stories “of the seen and unseen”. In “The Open Door”, a household is troubled by a mysterious voice that moans in the dark among nearby ruins, and a man decides that the matter must be settled. “The Portrait” is a tale of a haunted picture and a family secret that returns. In both, Oliphant is less interested in sudden shocks than in dread that builds slowly and in the feelings of those who must face it. Two LibriVox volunteers read the six parts, and the whole lasts about three and a half hours. Both belong to the great tradition of the Victorian ghost story, and both reward careful, attentive listening, ideally after dark.
Introduction
Margaret Oliphant, who lived from 1828 to 1897, was a Scottish writer who produced a vast amount of work: novels, biographies, histories, reviews and stories of the supernatural. She wrote to support her family and she often did so under great pressure, yet her best fiction shows remarkable subtlety. Her ghost stories, which she called stories of the seen and the unseen, are among the finest of the Victorian period.
The two stories recorded here belong to the tales that Oliphant wrote in the 1880s. “The Open Door” is set in a country house and concerns an unexplained noise, a voice calling from a ruined building, and the efforts of a man to understand it. “The Portrait” turns on a picture and on a family history that refuses to stay buried. They have a touch of the detective story, because in each tale the narrator is trying to find a rational explanation for something that seems to exceed reason.
The stories are told with restraint. Oliphant has a good ear for the sceptical voices of her characters, the doctors and the men of business, and a gift for the moment when their certainty begins to fail. There is also a note of tenderness for the families that are caught in the haunting.
The recording consists of six chapters and runs for about three and a half hours. Two LibriVox volunteers share the reading. It is an excellent choice for a dark evening, and a good introduction to a writer who deserves to be better known. Both stories show how a skilled writer can create a lasting chill from the simplest materials, and they are well suited to being heard in the evening.
Public domain
Margaret O. Oliphant died in 1897: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text