Enchanted Typewriter

What if the afterlife had a daily newspaper, and its most indefatigable gossip was a man who'd made his fame chronicling the living? That's the mischievous premise at the heart of The Enchanted Typewriter, John Kendrick Bangs's 1899 collection of fantastical tales. James Boswell, famed biographer of Samuel Johnson, remains as busy in death as he was in life, now editing a publication in Hades and corresponding with Bangs via an enchanted Remington that punches out dispatches from the underworld. The stories blur the line between satire and fantasy: we meet literary ghosts holding editorial meetings, encounter famous figures continuing their earthly pursuits, and watch Bangs receive peculiar assignments from his spectral correspondent. It's witty, gently satirical Victorian entertainment, full of literary in-jokes and the warm absurdity of dead authors refusing to rest. Anyone who delights in the fantasy of literature persisting beyond the grave, or who simply enjoys a clever metaphysical joke, will find enchantment here.