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The Uninhabited House by Mrs. J. H. Charlotte Riddell

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The Uninhabited House

by Mrs. J. H. Charlotte Riddell

Narrator Stefan Rudnicki

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Length 5 hours 20 minutes

Language English

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Summary
About the author
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“If ever a residence, ‘suitable in every respect for a family of position,’ haunted a lawyer’s offices, the ‘Uninhabited House,’ about which I have a story to tell, haunted those of Messrs. Craven and Son, No. 200, Buckingham Street, Strand.”

River Hall, the uninhabited house in question, is a place of ghosts and secrets, and it simply cannot keep a tenant. Inherited by the too-young Miss Helena Elmsdale after her father’s death, it falls to her aunt, Miss Susannah Blake, to attend to the house. In order to see that it remains rented out, Miss Blake brings the property to Messrs. Craven and Son for management. The lawyers do their best, but there is something sinister at River Hall, and the tenants cannot seem to leave fast enough, threatening to leave Miss Blake and her orphaned niece in dire financial straits. Miss Blake demands that something be done to rectify the situation, and one of the younger lawyers at the firm decides to stay in the house himself to uncover the mystery of the uninhabited house.

A forgotten classic, The Uninhabited House is an examination of the role of women in finances, class mobility, and the very Victorian anxieties over greed and stolen inheritances, all wrapped up in a chilling ghost story for the ages.

Classics Fiction Horror

Charlotte Riddell (1832–1906), who wrote as Mrs. J. H. Riddell, was one of the most popular and influential writers of the Victorian period. Her first novel, The Moors and the Fens, appeared in 1858. She issued it under the pseudonym of F. G. Trafford, which she abandoned for her own name in 1864. Between 1858 and 1902, she published thirty novels and tales. She was a prominent writer of ghost stories.

Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.