High Spirits (short story collection)
High Spirits is a collection of short stories by Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist and professor Robertson Davies. It was first published by Penguin Canada in 1982
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Robertson Davies was Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario from 1963 until 1981. Shortly after founding the College, he decided that he would tell a ghost story at the College's annual Christmas party — its Gaudy Night — as an entertainment. The telling of a ghost story became a tradition, and for eighteen years Davies wrote a new story, which he read out at the Gaudy Night celebration.
After Davies' retirement from Massey College, the eighteen stories were collected and published in the book High Spirits.
Contents
- "How the High Spirits Came About, A Chapter of Autobiography"
- "Revelation from a Smoky Fire"
- "The Ghost Who Vanished by Degrees"
- "The Great Queen is Amused"
- "The Night of the Three Kings"
- "The Charlottetown Banquet"
- "When Satan Comes Home for Christmas"
- "Refuge of Insulted Saints"
- "Dickens Digested"
- "The Kiss of Krushchev"
- "The Cat that Went to Trinity"
- "The Ugly Spectre of Sexism"
- "The Pit Whence Ye Are Digged"
- "The Perils of the Double Sign"
- "Conversations with the Little Table"
- "The King Enjoys His Own Again"
- "The Xerox in the Lost Room"
- "Einstein and the Little Lord"
- "Offer of Immortality"
Reception
Dave Langford reviewed Superluminal for White Dwarf #52, and stated that "It's the best collection since M R James in this narrow genre of donnish, tongue-in-cheek ghost stories."[1]
References
- Langford, Dave (April 1984). "Critical Mass". White Dwarf. Games Workshop (Issue 52): 18.
External links
- High Spirits at the Internet Book List
- University of Toronto Quarterly
- Washington Post, Montreal Gazette
- Boston Phoenix
- Canadian Literature