Ghost story · Humor
The Canterville Ghost
An American family buys a haunted English castle and refuses to be frightened by its very hard-working ghost.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A ghost nobody fears
Hiram B. Otis, the American minister in London, buys Canterville Chase, an old English country house, ghost included. Lord Canterville warns him honestly: the ghost has been seen for three centuries and has frightened several people half to death. Mr Otis replies, more or less, that if Europe really had a ghost, America would soon have it in a museum. When the family finds an old bloodstain on the library floor, the eldest son removes it at once with Pinkerton’s Champion Stain Remover. The ghost, Sir Simon, is outraged, and the Otis twins are only getting started. Oscar Wilde published it in a magazine in 1887, three years before The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Why it works for learners
It’s short, funny and built from clear, separate scenes: a stain, chains rattling in the night, a carefully planned haunting that goes wrong. The humor is mostly situation comedy (a ghost who takes pride in his work, a family who won’t play along), so it survives translation and simplification very well. The dialogue is crisp, and the contrast between American practicality and English tradition gives you useful vocabulary for houses, families and everyday objects. There’s a gentler, touching side too, in Virginia, the Otises’ daughter.
Which level to start at
A2 is a wonderful start: short, funny and easy to follow, and finishing a whole story in a new language is a good feeling. B1 keeps more of Wilde’s jokes. At B2 and above you’ll enjoy his satire of both sides of the Atlantic. Lexo’s narration gives the ghost a voice of his own, which he would certainly have insisted on.
Read next
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a ghost story from America
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde at full strength
- A Christmas Carol, ghosts with a purpose