I found an article in the archives published on the Fairweather Lewis blog about her ghost stories.
[I] came to be a Wharton fan through her ghost stories, particularly of a collection of eleven tales published by Scribner in 1985 called The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. The stories themselves lack the chilly majesty of Montague Rhodes James, arguably the greatest writer of literary ghost stories. In some respects, they are reminiscent of the work of Wharton’s close friend Henry James, no mean hand at ghost stories himself. The greatest charm of the book is a series of black and white illustrations by the Hungarian-American artist Laszlo Kubinyi, which are occasionally spookier than the stories themselves.
How many people feel the same way about the black-and-white artwork found in Bellairs’s books? Prospero in Five Dials? Sloane’s sinister pitching robot? The sight of a strange figure stalking the outskirts of New Zebedee? Rose Rita in Gert Bigger’s store?
Anyway, Fairweather notes a few of the eerie illustrations in the Wharton anthology:
The illustration accompanying the 1909 story Afterward seems to show a protective householder going out to give a trespasser a piece of his mind—until you notice how transparent and oddly out of place the man outside the window looks....A wealthy woman’s deceased maid returns from the grave to try to save her mistress from an abusive husband....The dead maid’s specter, in the background, has a look of decay about her that could frighten even the husband witless—as indeed she does.
Do we have any fans of Wharton or Kubinyi out there care wanting to share their comments on this edition, this artwork, or even what Wharton’s best ghost story?
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