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The Wedding Ghost
This book is intended for age 9+
64 pages, Paperback
First published June 25, 1987
68 people want to read
About the author
Leon Garfield
121 books49 followersLeon Garfield FRSL (14 July 1921 – 2 June 1996) was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 20, 2019
Three stars for a Garfield with Keeping illustrations needs some justification.
Jack - the hero’s name in folk tales - is to marry Jill, and yet he is mysteriously drawn to London and from there out to an island of horror and mystery. Here he seems to have no choice but to awaken a (or the?) Sleeping Beauty and to marry her. He finds himself back at his proper wedding, but haunted still by the ghostly Beauty from the island. “A strange wedding, with two brides...Once he had awakened the Sleeping Beauty, she would always be with him, would always be haunting him, and filling his heart with restless uncertainty and desire.” My word: at one level a great re-examination of the Sleeping Beauty story - at another a tragic myth of divided lives and loyalties. But for me it doesn’t quite fulfil its brief: the attempt to enter a world of eerie myth is accepted by Jack too readily, and the blunt illustrations of the mortals - bored and flat-faced- while they contrast well with the sensual lines of the Sleeping Beauty, do not evoke sympathy, and the time-slip element seems too quickly passed over.
Are author and artist - both masters in their own right- engaged in a project I haven’t understood?
Jack - the hero’s name in folk tales - is to marry Jill, and yet he is mysteriously drawn to London and from there out to an island of horror and mystery. Here he seems to have no choice but to awaken a (or the?) Sleeping Beauty and to marry her. He finds himself back at his proper wedding, but haunted still by the ghostly Beauty from the island. “A strange wedding, with two brides...Once he had awakened the Sleeping Beauty, she would always be with him, would always be haunting him, and filling his heart with restless uncertainty and desire.” My word: at one level a great re-examination of the Sleeping Beauty story - at another a tragic myth of divided lives and loyalties. But for me it doesn’t quite fulfil its brief: the attempt to enter a world of eerie myth is accepted by Jack too readily, and the blunt illustrations of the mortals - bored and flat-faced- while they contrast well with the sensual lines of the Sleeping Beauty, do not evoke sympathy, and the time-slip element seems too quickly passed over.
Are author and artist - both masters in their own right- engaged in a project I haven’t understood?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2015
I heard about this creepy book from a stumper posted on the YALSA-BK listserv. My library system didn't have it so I put in the interlibrary loan request.
First off, this book is odd because while it looks like a children's book - large format, illustrations on most pages - there is quite a lot of text and the language is old-fashioned, and the story... well, the story is pretty dark, and the illustrations are super creepy. The librarian who posted the stumper said it was a take on Sleeping Beauty, which I totally forgot until literally 75% of the way through the book. This is the weirdest version of Sleeping Beauty I've ever read.
So Jack, who receives a weird map at his wedding shower, is walking home and getting himself lost and decides in the dead of night to figure out where this map leads. He ends up on a boat, which drops him off at these weird woods, and everything up to this point is very drawn out and strange. Then, as he's walking through the woods, which turn into thorns, things get even weirder and there are skeletons in the branches and basically, he walks into Sleeping Beauty's castle.
If you like strange old books, find yourself a copy, because ugh. Just the illustrations are worth it. I honestly have no idea what age group this book was meant for. I wouldn't give it to a child.
First off, this book is odd because while it looks like a children's book - large format, illustrations on most pages - there is quite a lot of text and the language is old-fashioned, and the story... well, the story is pretty dark, and the illustrations are super creepy. The librarian who posted the stumper said it was a take on Sleeping Beauty, which I totally forgot until literally 75% of the way through the book. This is the weirdest version of Sleeping Beauty I've ever read.
So Jack, who receives a weird map at his wedding shower, is walking home and getting himself lost and decides in the dead of night to figure out where this map leads. He ends up on a boat, which drops him off at these weird woods, and everything up to this point is very drawn out and strange. Then, as he's walking through the woods, which turn into thorns, things get even weirder and there are skeletons in the branches and basically, he walks into Sleeping Beauty's castle.
If you like strange old books, find yourself a copy, because ugh. Just the illustrations are worth it. I honestly have no idea what age group this book was meant for. I wouldn't give it to a child.
June 7, 2013
Bit dark, lots of evocative description, maybe Y6
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 8, 2025
This book is one of a number of collaborations between Leon Garfield and Charles Keeping. I was lucky this year to visit the family-run museum dedicated to Charles Keeping in South Bromley, London. Here his work is being preserved (at great cost) for the future.
Charles Keeping’s work usually features finely detailed brickwork reminiscent of the inner-city London of his childhood. He applies the same level of intricate detail in his many pictures of animals or else in the helmets, swords and chainmail depicted in the historical novels he illustrated for Rosemary Sutcliff and Henry Treece.
For The Wedding Ghost by Leon Garfield the style is radically different. There is more focus on the characters and lots of abstraction and use of washes. Maybe this reflects the dreamlike quality of the story? It is superbly done and the picture of the riverside pub The Bird in Hand is a classic! I wonder if it’s the same pub featured in the Michael Caine film King of Thieves?
Charles Keeping’s work usually features finely detailed brickwork reminiscent of the inner-city London of his childhood. He applies the same level of intricate detail in his many pictures of animals or else in the helmets, swords and chainmail depicted in the historical novels he illustrated for Rosemary Sutcliff and Henry Treece.
For The Wedding Ghost by Leon Garfield the style is radically different. There is more focus on the characters and lots of abstraction and use of washes. Maybe this reflects the dreamlike quality of the story? It is superbly done and the picture of the riverside pub The Bird in Hand is a classic! I wonder if it’s the same pub featured in the Michael Caine film King of Thieves?
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February 18, 2018Surprisingly for such a wonderful book there are only 4 reviews on goodreads.
Proper stories with lots of pictures are less common but they do exist. ( recent reads include: "Odd and the Frost Giants" - Neil Gaiman with Chris Riddell illustrating, and "Beowulf" - Charles Keeping (Illustrator again), and Kevin Crossley-Holland (Translator), coincidentally both viking-esque)
Garfield writes powerful, rich, dark children's stories but no talking down to the kids. There is satire and fantasy here, as well as a genuinely spooky trip through the streets of a dirty, shadowy London and up a ghostly Thames - more like a crossing of the Styx to a fairytale underworld!
It reminded me of my own experience trying to read Garfield as a child - I stopped because it was too frightening!
Proper stories with lots of pictures are less common but they do exist. ( recent reads include: "Odd and the Frost Giants" - Neil Gaiman with Chris Riddell illustrating, and "Beowulf" - Charles Keeping (Illustrator again), and Kevin Crossley-Holland (Translator), coincidentally both viking-esque)
Garfield writes powerful, rich, dark children's stories but no talking down to the kids. There is satire and fantasy here, as well as a genuinely spooky trip through the streets of a dirty, shadowy London and up a ghostly Thames - more like a crossing of the Styx to a fairytale underworld!
It reminded me of my own experience trying to read Garfield as a child - I stopped because it was too frightening!
December 24, 2019
This book is weird.
The story is entirely absurd because there's the whole thing about, like, how this man ends up going and getting two wives? One is real and the other is a ghost that haunts him? It's just... not a good story overall.
It's also frequently listed as a "horror story for children," but it isn't. The audience is uncertain because it's not for anyone. The language is strange, the drawings are creepy, and the topic isn't even relevant for children; it's as if someone slammed a short story onto a picture book and some weird adults thought (because it looks like a picture book!) that it was meant for kids.
It's pretty... trash.
The story is entirely absurd because there's the whole thing about, like, how this man ends up going and getting two wives? One is real and the other is a ghost that haunts him? It's just... not a good story overall.
It's also frequently listed as a "horror story for children," but it isn't. The audience is uncertain because it's not for anyone. The language is strange, the drawings are creepy, and the topic isn't even relevant for children; it's as if someone slammed a short story onto a picture book and some weird adults thought (because it looks like a picture book!) that it was meant for kids.
It's pretty... trash.
February 15, 2023
Garfield continues to fascinate. His writing was usually aimed at the YA or younger crowd, but the twisted evilness that often lurks in his writing deserves more of both an adult, and an American audience. The Wedding Ghost is a retelling of a classic folk/fairy tale, though you’ll have to read it to find out more. Like all Garfield “kids’ books,” this is wonderfully dark, and a bit disturbing. Perfect for a dark and stormy night, with maybe a brandy on the side. As with Garfield’s Greek myths tales, the art work of Keating really adds to the experience. Ignore that it is, like Trix, for kids and search it out.
March 17, 2019
This is a quick but entertaining story. It is dark, but has very vivid descriptions and story-telling. A bit of a twist on Sleeping Beauty that has been updated to more modern times, yet loses none of its appeal. The illustrations are excellent, and made getting the hardbound version worth it.
April 26, 2018
A wonderful, chilling, creepy adult fairy tale. A vivid analogy about the choices we make in life, and sometimes, about the fantasies that lurk in the back of our minds and keep us going.
March 3, 2019
Time Snored... what a way to open a story... this page superbly leaped onto the story through the clever use of metaphor.. I love it. Great for y6 and so much you can do with the story.
January 28, 2021
A haunting and surreal retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fable, with exquisite illustrations.
July 24, 2022
I think the illustrations were a big part of my enjoyment of the story. Interesting quick little read.
June 12, 2015
I bought this for the Charles Keeping illustrations. He's one of my three or four favorite book artists, and I collect his work wherever I see it. Bless Amazon, because otherwise not only would I have no idea what his body of work consisted of, I certainly wouldn't be able to find it.
So I picked up the Wedding Ghost. This is pretty typical Keeping, but not my favorite - I love his work in Rosemary Sutcliffe's books, where the concentration is less on these strange body outlines that he does, the limbs beneath the clothes, and more on the organic shape that a person in a cloak makes, for example - where the shape is defined by the body beneath it rather then the body sort of showing right through the clothing. The faces in this are disturbing because they're so dam' ugly. Even the wedding ghost, the spectral bride or woken sleeping beauty, whichever you want to term her, is beautiful in repose but actually rather terrifying while awake, in the expression of her face and in her movement.
I have no real idea where they were going with this story, it is odd and creepy. Some of the art is beautiful, some is just strange.
I would ONLY buy this if like me you're collecting Keeping's work.
So I picked up the Wedding Ghost. This is pretty typical Keeping, but not my favorite - I love his work in Rosemary Sutcliffe's books, where the concentration is less on these strange body outlines that he does, the limbs beneath the clothes, and more on the organic shape that a person in a cloak makes, for example - where the shape is defined by the body beneath it rather then the body sort of showing right through the clothing. The faces in this are disturbing because they're so dam' ugly. Even the wedding ghost, the spectral bride or woken sleeping beauty, whichever you want to term her, is beautiful in repose but actually rather terrifying while awake, in the expression of her face and in her movement.
I have no real idea where they were going with this story, it is odd and creepy. Some of the art is beautiful, some is just strange.
I would ONLY buy this if like me you're collecting Keeping's work.
March 3, 2016
This a strange thing - a short story done up as a long picture book; half fairy-tale and half realistic story, with a strange, unreachable meaning.
It’s essentially the story of Sleeping Beauty but odder, with ghosts and set somewhere in Victorian England.
I read it to fast because I wanted to reach the end, the process being too unnerving to read slowly.
An interesting curiosity - and the illustrations by Charles Keeping are, of course, brilliant.
It’s essentially the story of Sleeping Beauty but odder, with ghosts and set somewhere in Victorian England.
I read it to fast because I wanted to reach the end, the process being too unnerving to read slowly.
An interesting curiosity - and the illustrations by Charles Keeping are, of course, brilliant.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews