Six years after writing the story The Secret Chamber, Margaret Oliphant reworked this story line in greater detail in the novel The Wizard's Son. In both stories the ghost of a sinister ancestor maintains a powerful hold over each new generation of descendants, blighting their hopes and prospects. In place of the innocent young man of the earlier story, in The Wizard's Son Mrs Oliphant portrays a young man already mired in the ways of the world, who must struggle against evil forces within as well as without.
