Publisher's Synopsis
Wilde mixes the macabre with comedy, juxtaposing devices from traditional English ghost stories such as creaking floorboards, clanking chains, and ancient prophecies. ghost of Canterville is the soul in pain of a noble ghost named Sir Simón Canterville, who for three hundred years has haunted the castle of his family after killing his wife, Lady Eleonore, justifying himself in the serious shortcomings he had as a wife (between others, he mentions that he did not know how to cook at all and that he lacked beauty completely), and died after nine years after disappearing in strange circumstances. According to himself, he tells Virginia shortly before finding peace, Lady Eleonore's brothers let him starve to death (then history reveals that this happened in the basement of the castle, where he remained chained with shackles to a wall, near a pitcher which contained water and a plate with food).
