American writer John Kendrick Bangs was an innovator who removed the ponderous solemnity from the typical ghost story and replaced it with his own trademark wit and imagination. The Enchanted Typewriter is part of Bangs' Associated Shades series, which features famous people who have passed on to the afterlife. In these stories, the famed 18th-century writer James Boswell has been appointed to the role of editor for the newspaper of Hades, so he supplies all the latest news on the underworld's well-known denizens.
