The Canterville Ghost is a short story written by Oscar Wilde and first published in 1887 in serial form in The Court and Society Review, a magazine read by the upper classes. It was republished in 1891 as a part of a collection of short stories. It tells the story of a rich American family that comes to live in a haunted aristocratic house in England. The style is part fairy tale, part gothic novel and part comic ghost story. The main themes are the cultural differences between middle-class Americans and the upper class British and the conflict between the public self and the private self.