IES Book Collecting Seminar: A Ghost Story for Christmas - the festive publication history of ghost stories

In this seminar our experts Tanya Kirk and Jess Starr will discuss the publication history of Christmas Ghost stories. We will look at their market, popularisation, and printing as well as exploring the world of archival publishing and how it relates to book collecting, specifically looking at the British Library Tales of the Weird series. The evening will be rounded off with an extract from a seasonal tale.

Tanya Kirk is currently the Fellow Librarian at St. John’s College, Cambridge. Prior to this she was Lead Curator of Printed Heritage Collections 1601-1900 at the British Library, where she co-curated several major exhibitions including Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination and Fantasy: Realms of Imagination. She is the editor of four Christmas-themed collections of short stories in the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series.

Jessica Starr has worked in the rare book trade for a decade, joining Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers as an intern in the spring of 2015 while completing her MA in the History of the Book at the University of London. In addition to her MA, Jessica has a BA in English Literature from the University of British Columbia and an MI in Library and Information Science from the University of Toronto.