In the course of this finely argued book, Andrew Smith offers an important historicist revision of Freud on trauma and the uncanny before moving on to explore a hugely impressive range of ghost-texts written during the First World War and later. The criticism is acute and sensitive, the historical context vividly drawn.

- David Punter, University of Bristol,

This extraordinary book draws on resources both literary and otherwise, to make sense of the unexpected cultural work done by ghost stories during the First World War. As one panelist says, the book is “a deftly assembled, compellingly argued, and sensitively written examination of the Gothic’s work mediating the traumatic experiences and losses of the Great War by way of its army of ghosts – homely, homeless, malevolent, restless. A major contribution to the rapidly expanding field of War/Battlefield Gothic, this study remains, tragically, timely and topical.”

Another panelist stated that the book is, “a weighty and serious work that has already begun to influence how I think about ghost stories. Smith also notably combines attention to canonical Modernist texts with little-known fiction, both of which expand the Gothic canon in different ways.”
This is a vital book for anybody working on ghost fiction in any period, and for any scholar of war or of trauma, in any period. Smith’s book helps us think in subtle, new ways about how gothic representation can be part of struggles to come to terms with mass suffering. Smith shows the contradictory, surprising, and moving ways in which ghost stories are part of such cultural work - cultural work which is, sadly, of continuing and sharp relevance.

- Sara Wasson, Chair of the International Gothic Association’s Allan Lloyd Smith Prize