

For three centuries, an ethereal specter has haunted the grand ancestral dwelling of Lord Canterville's lineage. Wearied by the spectral presence, the Canterville family seeks reprieve. Thus, Lord Canterville makes a momentous decision—to sell his storied mansion to an American family. The eager purchaser, Mr. Hiram B. Otis, acquires the house and its resident ghost with peculiar enthusiasm, for, as everyone knows, Americans hold no faith in apparitions. With the Canterville ghost resolved to evoke spine-tingling terror among the Otis clan, a grand performance of fright is set in motion. Yet, these Americans prove to be an altogether different breed—two rambunctious young boys and a family who hold their ground firmly in the face of the supernatural. As the ghost's grand plans unravel, unforeseen surprises await, revealing that even phantoms can be met with unexpected turns of fate.
Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford where, a disciple of Pater, he founded an aesthetic cult. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and his two sons were born in 1885 and 1886.
His novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and social comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), established his reputation. In 1895, following his libel action against the Marquess of Queesberry, Wilde was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for homosexual conduct, as a result of which he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), and his confessional letter De Profundis (1905). On his release from prison in 1897 he lived in obscurity in Europe, and died in Paris in 1900.
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