Introduction

Told After Supper (1891) is a collection of short ghost stories written by the English writer Jerome K Jerome. The collection’s “introductory” starts as follows: “It was Christmas Eve. I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way to begin […] The experienced reader knows it was Christmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story.”

Stories and Themes

Hence, all the short stories included here happen on Christmas Eve and their events are marked with the presence of supernatural elements. Being all told by a first-person narrator, the stories are entitled “How the Stories Came to be Told,” Teddy Biffles’ story,” “The Doctor’s story,” “Mr. Coombe’s Story,” “My Uncle’s Story,” “A Personal Explanation,” and “My Own Story.”

Jerome mingles the fantastic with humor and even tells jokes about ghosts to mix the feeling of fear with laughter. He classifies these nightly visitors into “middle-class ghosts,” “young ghosts,” “conscientious ghosts,” “average British ghosts,” and “lady specters” who are “contradictory and snappish, and liable to burst into tears.”

They all hold their annual feast on Christmas Eve, their “great gala night.”