The Upper Berth | A Ghost Story by F. Marion Crawford | A Bitesized Audio Production

On a well-appointed transatlantic steamer, the stateroom numbered 105 has acquired a somewhat dubious reputation. Mr. Brisbane, a seasoned seafarer, is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding his cabin and his elusive room-mate...

A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.

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Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) was born in Tuscany, Italy, to American parents (the sculptor Thomas Crawford and his wife Louisa Cutler Ward) and spent his formative years in several European countries, as well as India and the United States. He settled permanently in Italy in 1883, a year after publishing his first novel, 'Mr Issacs'. He went on to write many more novels, often with a historical aspect, countless articles in periodicals, and numerous classic weird and fantastic short stories.

'The Upper Berth' was written in 1885, and first appeared in print in December of that year in 'The Broken Shaft: Tales in Mid-Ocean', Unwin’s Christmas Annual 1886, an apparently short-lived London periodical edited and produced by the publisher T. Fisher Unwin. It has gone on to be regularly anthologised and has gained a reputation as one of the best and most original of Victorian era ghost stories. The 20th century ghost story author H. Russell Wakefield described it as "the very best one" in an essay on the genre in 1961.

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2020.