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Lady Ferry: A Ghost Story for Christmas
91 pages, Paperback
Published October 28, 2025
About the author
Sarah Orne Jewett
422 books179 followersSarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist and short story writer, best known for her local color works set in or near South Berwick, Maine, on the border of New Hampshire, which in her day was a declining New England seaport.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 5, 2025
She's so old!
December 8, 2025
As if getting old wasn’t scary enough…
December 25, 2025
A ghost-ish story, but not scary at all. I liked that it felt reflective.
The overall message is nicely put in the opening line:
“We have an instinctive fear of death, yet we have a horror of a life prolonged far beyond the average limit: it is sorrowful; it is pitiful; it has no attractions.”
I’m not sure if my old English teacher would have been impressed or horrified by the number of semicolons in that sentence, but consider me impressed.
The overall message is nicely put in the opening line:
“We have an instinctive fear of death, yet we have a horror of a life prolonged far beyond the average limit: it is sorrowful; it is pitiful; it has no attractions.”
I’m not sure if my old English teacher would have been impressed or horrified by the number of semicolons in that sentence, but consider me impressed.
January 21, 2026
Lady Ferry: A Ghost Story for Christmas (1896) by Sarah Orne Jewett is part of Seth's illustrated small book series of stories he suggests you read on Christmas eve, originally a British tradition (see Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol as the best known model), but still going on in. . . well, my house, at least, though I clearly am still catching up, reading well into January, as the books now must number more than 25. And yeah, I am collecting them. So cute! They fit right in your back pocket, if you have a back pocket.
Illustrator and cartoonist Seth's a sentimentalist, filled with nostalgia for the rapidly fading past, and in the series he wants to both keep this old tradition alive and also introduce you to authors who are long dead and gone but still great to read. In a sense, he wants to "ghost them," to put a twist on a new phrase, as in bring them back from the dead. I first read Sarah Orne Jewett in high school, a short story, A White Heron, and I subsequently taught the story when I became an English teacher. I had never read Lady Ferry before; it's one of the longer stories in the series, but well-written.
Lady Ferry is a ghost, and there's no "is-it-a-ghost-or-are-they-all-mad?" question here. Everyone in the house knows Lady Ferry, an old woman, is still floating around. A girl comes to stay in her aunt's house for several months and she gets to know Lady Ferry, who otherwise had a bit of a crusty, stand-offish rep in the house. But the two hit it off. So the vibe is only somewhat eerie. It's more about a sweetish friendship between a girl and a ghost with a touch of melancholy, as the girl, later in life, returns to the (always decaying) mansion to reminisce about her months with Lady Ferry.
Illustrator and cartoonist Seth's a sentimentalist, filled with nostalgia for the rapidly fading past, and in the series he wants to both keep this old tradition alive and also introduce you to authors who are long dead and gone but still great to read. In a sense, he wants to "ghost them," to put a twist on a new phrase, as in bring them back from the dead. I first read Sarah Orne Jewett in high school, a short story, A White Heron, and I subsequently taught the story when I became an English teacher. I had never read Lady Ferry before; it's one of the longer stories in the series, but well-written.
Lady Ferry is a ghost, and there's no "is-it-a-ghost-or-are-they-all-mad?" question here. Everyone in the house knows Lady Ferry, an old woman, is still floating around. A girl comes to stay in her aunt's house for several months and she gets to know Lady Ferry, who otherwise had a bit of a crusty, stand-offish rep in the house. But the two hit it off. So the vibe is only somewhat eerie. It's more about a sweetish friendship between a girl and a ghost with a touch of melancholy, as the girl, later in life, returns to the (always decaying) mansion to reminisce about her months with Lady Ferry.
January 14, 2026
Okay, I am NOW done with the entire series of Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories. I found out about this one a couple of days ago. This one is just melancholy, not at all spooky. Just made me sad. But it was well-written!
"I was safe and comfortable with her: it was the same feeling which one learns to have toward God more and more, as one grows older."
"I have learned, since those childish days, that one must battle against storms if one would reach the calm which is to follow them. I have learned also that anxiety, sorrow, and regret fall to the lot of everyone, and that there is always underlying our lives, this mysterious and frightful element of existence; an uncertainty at times, though we do trust everything to God. Under the best loved and most beautiful face we know, there is hidden a skull as ghastly as that from which we turn aside with a shudder in the anatomist's cabinet. We smile, and are gay enough; God pity us! We try to forget our heartaches and remorse. We even call our lives commonplace, and bearing our own heaviest burdens silently, we try to keep the commandment, and to bear one another's also. There is One who knows: we look forward, as He means we shall, and there is always a hand ready to help us, though we reach out for it doubtfully in the dark."
"I was safe and comfortable with her: it was the same feeling which one learns to have toward God more and more, as one grows older."
"I have learned, since those childish days, that one must battle against storms if one would reach the calm which is to follow them. I have learned also that anxiety, sorrow, and regret fall to the lot of everyone, and that there is always underlying our lives, this mysterious and frightful element of existence; an uncertainty at times, though we do trust everything to God. Under the best loved and most beautiful face we know, there is hidden a skull as ghastly as that from which we turn aside with a shudder in the anatomist's cabinet. We smile, and are gay enough; God pity us! We try to forget our heartaches and remorse. We even call our lives commonplace, and bearing our own heaviest burdens silently, we try to keep the commandment, and to bear one another's also. There is One who knows: we look forward, as He means we shall, and there is always a hand ready to help us, though we reach out for it doubtfully in the dark."
September 16, 2025
Lady Ferry deals with a restless spirit that has become accepted by the household she occasionally haunts, for hers is a melancholy story. The quality of the story, in addition to its attentiveness to mood and detail, has much to do with its pacing, which owes to, I suspect, having been written to be read aloud. If a comma = ½ beat pause, a semi-colon = one full beat, and a period = two beats, then Lady Ferry excels at pulling along the listener, building a string of details, connecting them, and pausing to let their creepy significance sink in.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
January 30, 2026
An interesting concept but ultimately a tediously boring telling for most of the tale, especially the inner thoughts of the young girl recounting her time at her cousin's house. The narrator tells us she has no wish to be wearisome, but fails in that regard. It picks up a bit near the end, and readers are asked to interpret what was actually happening.
The Biblioasis edition text covers 69 pages, the rest being Seth's uninspired drawings and publisher information.
The Biblioasis edition text covers 69 pages, the rest being Seth's uninspired drawings and publisher information.
January 4, 2026
An absolutely lovely tale, ghostly but not truly scary or spooky and rather whistful. The real haunting spectre here is the passage of time, for our title character and particularly our narrator. A rather different sort of take for this series, but a very welcome one. One of my favorites.
November 2, 2025
She’s a lady
Want to Read
November 29, 2025Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews