- Mugby Junction
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Mugby Junction was a set of short stories by Charles Dickens written in 1866. It was first published in a Christmas edition of the magazine All The Year Round.
It includes the famous ghost story The Signalman concerning a spectre seen beside a tunnel entrance. The signal-man of the title tells the narrator of a ghost that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes, and is a harbinger of, a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's work is at a signalbox in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the line, and he controls the movements of passing trains. When there is danger, his fellow signalmen alert him via telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a fashion that only he can hear. Each warning is followed by the appearance of the spectre, and then by a terrible accident.
The first accident involves a terrible collision between two trains in the tunnel. It is likely that Dickens based this incident on the Clayton Tunnel rail crash that occurred in 1861, five years before he wrote the story. Readers in 1866 would have been familiar with this major disaster. The second warning involves the mysterious death of a young woman on a passing train. The final warning is a premonition of the signalman's own death.
Another story features in a thinly disguised form Rugby in Warwickshire and the town's railway station. One of the stories satirizes the refreshment rooms, where Dickens was humiliated by the proprietess when he was ordering a cup of coffee. She refused to pass him the sugar bowl until paid, clearly not recognising the celebrity author.
References
External links
- Online editions
- Mugby Junction at Project Gutenberg
- Mugby Junction - Easy to read HTML version.
Works by Charles Dickens Novels The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837) · Oliver Twist (1837–1839) · Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839) · The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1841) · Barnaby Rudge (1840–1841) · Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–1844) · Dombey and Son (1846–1848) · David Copperfield (1849–1850) · Bleak House (1852–1853) · Hard Times (1854) · Little Dorrit (1855–1857) · A Tale of Two Cities (1859) · Great Expectations (1860–1861) · Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865) · The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished) (1870)Christmas books A Christmas Carol (1843) · The Chimes (1844) · The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) · The Battle of Life (1846) · The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)Short stories Sunday Under Three Heads (1836) · The Lamplighter (1838) · A Child's Dream of a Star (1850) · Captain Murderer · The Long Voyage (1853) · The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1857) (with Wilkie Collins) · Hunted Down (1859) · The Signal-Man (1866) · George Silverman's Explanation (1868) · Holiday Romance (1868)Christmas
short storiesA Christmas Tree (1850) · What Christmas is, as We Grow Older (1851) · The Poor Relation's Story (1852) · The Child's Story (1852) · The Schoolboy's Story (1853) · Nobody's Story (1853) · Going into Society (1858) · Somebody's Luggage (1862) · Mrs Lirriper's Lodgings (1863) · Mrs Lirriper's Legacy (1864) · Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions (1865)Short story
collectionsSketches by Boz (1837–1839) · The Mudfog Papers (1837–1838) · Master Humphrey's Clock (1840–1841) · Boots at the Holly-tree Inn: And Other Stories (1858) · Reprinted Pieces (1861)Non-fiction American Notes (1842) · Pictures from Italy (1846) · The Life of Our Lord (1846, published in 1934) · A Child's History of England (1851–1853) · The Uncommercial Traveller (1860–1869)Poetry & plays The Village Coquettes (play, 1836) · The Fine Old English Gentleman (poetry, 1841) · The Frozen Deep (play, 1866) (with Wilkie Collins) · No Thoroughfare: A Drama: In Five Acts (play, 1867) (with Wilkie Collins)Journalism The Examiner (1808–1886) · Monthly Magazine (1833–1835) · Morning Chronicle (1834–1836) · Evening Chronicle (1835) · Bentley's Miscellany (1836–1838) · Master Humphrey's Clock (1840–1841) · The Pic-Nic Papers (1841) · Daily News (1846) · Household Words (1850–1859) · All the Year Round (1858–1870)Collaborations Household Words: The Seven Poor Travellers (1854) (with Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Proctor, George Sala and Eliza Linton) · The Holly-tree Inn (1855) · (with Wilkie Collins, William Howitt, Harriet Parr, and Adelaide Procter) · The Wreck of the Golden Mary (1856) (with Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Proctor, Harriet Parr, Percy Fitzgerald and Rev. James White) · The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) (with Wilkie Collins) · A House to Let (1858) (with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Procter)
All the Year Round: The Haunted House (1859) (with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Procter, George Sala, and Hesba Stretton) · A Message from the Sea (1860) (with Wilkie Collins, Robert Buchanan, Charles Allston Collins, Amelia Edwards, and Harriet Parr) · Tom Tiddler's Ground (1861) (with Wilkie Collins, John Harwood, Charles Allston Collins, and Amelia Edwards) · The Trial for Murder (1865) (with Charles Allston Collins) · Mugby Junction (1866) (with Andrew Halliday, Charles Allston Collins, Hesba Stretton and Amelia Edwards) · No Thoroughfare (1867) (with Wilkie Collins)Articles & essays A Visit to Newgate (1836) · Epitaph of Charles Irving Thornton (1842) · In Memoriam W. M. Thackeray (1850) · A Coal Miner's Evidence (1850) · Frauds on the Fairies (1853) · The Lost Arctic Voyagers (1854)wwww.mugbyjunction.com
Categories:- 1866 short stories
- Short stories by Charles Dickens
- Works originally published in All the Year Round
- Story stubs
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