When Ghost Meets Ghost

De Morgan, William, 1839-1917Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 2.1M words
Chapters: 214

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.When Ghost Meets Ghost by William De MorganAuthor: De Morgan, William, 1839-1917,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 9, 2010

Editor's review

This novel comes from William De Morgan, a Victorian polymath who was a novelist as well as a celebrated ceramic designer and spiritualist—backgrounds that give the work a gentler handling of the supernatural than its plot alone might suggest. As a free public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg, its value lies first in accessibility: readers can encounter, at no cost, a lesser-discussed corner of late nineteenth-century English literature. The "ghosts meet" premise is closer to a blend of domestic comedy and family narrative than to horror; the reading experience has an old-fashioned English ease and humor, with dense dialogue and character relationships that reward patience. Suitable as supplementary reading for English literature students, or for readers interested in Victorian popular fiction and ghostly themes to read in segments on the commute or before bed. Note that this is the original English text and an early digitization, with limited formatting and annotation; a dictionary or bilingual reference tool is recommended.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English literature students seeking non-canonical Victorian authors
Readers who enjoy ghostly themes but avoid gore and prefer gentle narratives
Researchers working on public-domain eBook projects who need English corpus material
Readers with intermediate or higher English proficiency who like old-style dialogue-driven fiction

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking strong plot and fast-paced supernatural thrills
Those with weak English who need Chinese annotations to read smoothly
Researchers requiring authoritative critical editions or detailed scholarly annotation

Reading tips

Read the first five chapters to sort out the character relationships, then proceed chapter by chapter to avoid giving up midway
Keep a vocabulary notebook for old-fashioned expressions and religious or supernatural terms
Use De Morgan's spiritualist background to notice how the book treats "ghosts" as everyday matters
Read one or two chapters per commute to maintain continuity with the dialogue-driven narrative

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a horror novel?

No. Judging from the title and the author's background, it is closer to a blend of Victorian domestic fiction and gentle supernatural themes, focusing on character relationships and the pleasures of dialogue rather than on scares. Readers expecting gore or strong suspense may find the pace slow.

What English level does it require?

It is a late nineteenth-century English novel with long sentences, dense dialogue, and old-fashioned as well as religious and supernatural vocabulary. Intermediate or higher reading ability is recommended, along with a dictionary or bilingual reference tool; otherwise it is easy to lose track of the character relationships.

Does this edition include annotations or an introduction?

This is a public-domain electronic text from Project Gutenberg, valued mainly for being free and accessible; it usually contains no scholarly annotations or introduction. For detailed background, consult the author's biography and research on Victorian supernatural themes separately.

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About the author

De Morgan, William, 1839-1917 Author

William De Morgan (1839-1917) was a British novelist active in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. He began writing fiction relatively late in life, yet became known for a distinctive blend of fantasy and gentle humor. Three of his works are held in this collection: When Ghost Meets Ghost, Somehow Good, and It Never Can Happen Again. These novels typically revolve around strange coincidences in everyday life, supernatural rumors, and the twists and turns of human fate, with brisk, imaginative plots and a narrative voice that carries the ease and wit of an old-fashioned storyteller. Because public information about him is limited, biographical details are difficult to verify, but his works show a talent for weaving suspense into ordinary settings and using ghosts and odd encounters to mirror human nature and social manners, offering both entertainment and mild satire of human foibles.