Edith Wharton 
Tales of men and ghosts 

Tales of Men and Ghosts by Edith Wharton is a book composed of ten short stories: The Bolted Door, His Father’s Son, The Daunt Diana, The Debt, Full Circle, The Legend, The Eyes, The Blond Beast, Afterward and The Letters. The ‘ghost stories’ are more compelling, based on what Wharton called a well-written ’thermometric quality’ of a phantom; that is, his ability to ‘[send] a shiver along the spine’. These stories often depend on psychological intuition, as well as moral or social, for example, when Andrew Culwin realizes that the ‘Eyes’ that persecute him are his. In ‘Afterward’, when Ned Boyne leaves his bride for the ghost of the business partner who betrayed her part of a mining fortune, Mary Boyne must realize the limitations of the marriage relationship that she had considered so idyllic.