Although they tried to earn a living, they found themselves 'on the edge of beggary.' In The Uninhabited House, the sisters are saved when Kathleen marries a businessman, Mr. In this story, the Blake sisters (the other being Kathleen, now deceased) discover one day that 'their trustee had robbed them,' and that they were penniless. Her skills came in handy after her marriage when her husband also suffered some financial setbacks.

After her father died and left the family in financial straits, Charlotte and her mother relocated to London where Charlotte took up writing as a way to help support herself. Without giving anything away, the circumstances in which Miss Blake and her niece find themselves in this book are loosely based on events in the author's own life. With Miss Blake demanding that something be done, one man takes it upon himself to stay in the house so he can discover the secrets that plague River Hall. Craven realizes that the house that is doomed by reputation to never again see a tenant grace its threshold. After one tenant decides he's had enough, Mr. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, the house has a history of tenants who are only too eager to leave shortly after taking the place. She is not the easiest of clients, but the lawyers do their very best to keep it rented for her. Miss Elmsdale has not yet reached her majority, however, so the business of keeping the house rented falls to her aunt Miss Susannah Blake who puts it in the hands of her attorneys, Messrs. The 'uninhabited house' of the title is River Hall, the property of Miss Helena Elmsdale who inherited the property after the death of her father. An incredibly prolific writer, Riddell's vast bibliography includes over fifty novels and short stories, several of them classified as 'supernatural.' The Uninhabited House is a novella-sized haunted house story, set just outside of London along the banks of the Thames.

My many go thanks to Michael Flowers, who maintains a website dedicated to Charlotte Riddell (1832 - 1906) where I was fortunate enough to find some valuable information about this relatively unknown author - well, at least I'd not heard of her prior to discovering this book.

Weird stories charlotte riddell