The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

Selected & Introduced by David Stuart Davies.

Traumatised by ghost stories in her youth, Pulitzer Prize winning author Edith Wharton (1862 -1937) channelled her fear and obsession into creating a series of spine-tingling tales filled with spirits beyond the grave and other supernatural phenomena. While claiming not to believe in ghosts, paradoxically she did confess that she was frightened of them. Wharton imbues this potent irrational and imaginative fear into her ghostly fiction to great effect.

In this unique collection of finely wrought tales Wharton demonstrates her mastery of the ghost story genre. Amongst the many supernatural treats within these pages you will encounter a married farmer bewitched by a dead girl; a ghostly bell which saves a woman’s reputation; the weird spectral eyes which terrorise the midnight hours of an elderly aesthete; the haunted man who receives letters from his dead wife; and the frightening power of a doppelganger which foreshadows a terrible tragedy.

Compelling, rich and strange, the ghost stories of Edith Wharton, like vintage wine, have matured and grown more potent with the passing years.

Stories include:

• The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
• The Eyes
• Afterward
• Kerfol
• The Triumph of Night
• The Duchess at Prayer
• Miss Mary Pask
• Bewitched
• The Fulness of Life
• Mr Jones
• Pomegranate Seed
• The Looking Glass
• A Journey
• All Souls’
• A Bottle of Perrier

 
publisher: wordsworth editions

pages: 304