A fine collection of gripping, gory and chilling stories many of which lay the foundation for several modern day films. If you want a good spook then here is some good bed time reading, although maybe sleep with the light on!
June 2010 Guest Editor Patrick Gale on M. R. James...
James didn’t invent the ghost story but he certainly perfected it. With their dry tone and fussily academic narrators, his tales of ghosts and demons in everything from a hotel room to a picture and even a whistle build a convincing sense of evil from what is left unsaid or unexplained. If the mutilated ghost children in Lost Hearts don’t lead to you drawing your curtains more firmly, you have no imagination…
'I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own...'
Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M. R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and night-time settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses, remote inns, ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings for unbearable menace, from creatures seeking retribution and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb.
This edition presents all of James's published ghost stories, including the unforgettable 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' and 'Casting the Runes', and an appendix of James's writings on the ghost story. Darryl Jones's introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
'There are some authors one wishes one had never read in order to have
the joy of reading them for the first time. For me, M.R. James is one
of these.' - Ruth Rendall
Author
About M. R. James
Montague Rhodes James, the son of a Kent curate, was born near Bury St Edmunds in 1862. He became an avid reader at a very early age, taking a special interest in antiquarian books. At the age of six he fell ill with bronchitis. While recovering, he asked to see a rare 17th century Dutch bible that belonged to Bishop Ryle, a friend of his father’s. James studied it intently. It was the beginning of a career that would take him eventually to Eton and Cambridge. At King’s College, Cambridge he became assistant in classical archaeology at the Fitzwilliam museum. His dissertation on The Apocalypse of St Peter won him both election as a Fellow of King’s and a position lecturing in divinity. His interests diversified, and by the time he was made Dean of the college in 1889, he was widely regarded as an authority on medievalism. During this period, James was a prolific writer on a wide range of academic subjects. His academic career led him to be provost of King’s College in 1905, and later vice-chancellor of the University.
But for all his academic achievements, he is best remembered for his masterly ghost stories. There are approximately forty supernatural tales (some incomplete). His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), was followed by More Ghost Stories (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), A Warning to the Curious (1925) and The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (1931). Apart from the ghost stories, his output of medieval scholarship was phenomenal. He catalogued many of the manuscript libraries of the Cambridge and Oxford colleges. Among his other scholarly works, he wrote The Apocalypse in Art, which placed illuminated Apocalypse manuscripts into families. He also translated the New Testament Apocrypha.
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