M R James Books In Order

The Five Jars

Montague Rhodes James 1862 1936, who published under the byline M. R. James, was a noted medieval scholar and provost of King’s College, Cambridge 1905 1918 and of Eton College 1918 1936, best remembered today for his ghost stories in the classic Victorian Yuletide vein. He is most widely known for his ghost stories, but as a medieval scholar his output was phenomenal and remains highly respected in scholarly circles. His discovery of a manuscript fragment led to excavations in the ruins of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, in 1902, in which the graves of several twelfth century abbots described by Jocelyn de Brakelond a contemporary chronicler were rediscovered, having been lost since the Dissolution. James’s ghost stories were published in a series of collections: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary 1904, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary 1911, A Thin Ghost and Others 1919, and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories 1925. Other works include Old Testament Legends 1913, Abbeys 1925, and Collected Ghost Stories 1931.

Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary

From ‘The Ash Tree’: Everyone who has traveled over Eastern England knows the smaller country houses with which it is studded the rather dank little buildings, usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some eighty to a hundred acres…
. I have to tell you of a curious series of events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I have sketched are still there Italian portico, square block of white house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old ash tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling house built. At any rate, it had well nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690. In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene of a number of witch trials. Also includes the classic M.R. James tales, ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook,’ ‘Lost Hearts,’ ‘The Mezzotint,’ ‘Number 13,’ ‘Count Magnus,’ ”Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’,’ and ‘The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.’

More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

The follow up volume to ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’ collects seven more of Montague Rhodes James’s classic horror stories, including ‘A School Story,’ ‘The Rose Garden,’ ‘Casting the Runes,’ and ‘Martin’s Close.’ ‘…
gifted with an almost diabolic power of calling horror by gentle steps from the midst of prosaic daily life, is the scholarly Montague Rhodes James, Provost of Eton College, antiquary of note, and recognized authority on medi val manuscripts and cathedral history. Dr. James, long fond of telling spectral tales at Christmastide, has become by slow degrees a literary weird fictionist of the very first rank!’ H.P. Lovecraft

A Thin Ghost and Others

This volume of M.R. James’s classic ghostly fiction contains: ‘Preface,’ ‘The Residence at Whitminster,’ ‘The Diary of Mr. Poynter,’ ‘The Episode of Cathedral History,’ ‘The Story of a Disappearance and an appearance,’ and ‘Two Doctors.’

About this volume, the author wrote: ‘I have had my doubts about the wisdom of publishing a third set of tales; sequels are, not only proverbially but actually, very hazardous things. However, the tales make no pretence but to amuse, and my friends have not seldom asked for the publication. So not a great deal is risked, perhaps, and perhaps also some one’s Christmas may be the cheerfuller for a storybook which, I think, only once mentions the war.’

The Ghost Stories

M.R. James is probably the finest ghost story writer England has ever produced. These tales are not only classics of their genre, but are also superb examples of beautifully paced understatement, convincing background and chilling terror.
As well as the preface, there is a fascinating tail piece by M.R. James, Stories I Have Tried To Write , which accompanies these thirty tales. Among them are ‘Casting the Runes’, ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll come to you, My Lad’, ‘The Tractate Middoth’, ‘The Ash Tree’ and ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook’.
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

Casting the Runes

When we think of ghost stories, we tend to think of cub scouts cringing by a fire, s’mores at the ready, as some aging camp counselor tries to scare them witless with yet another tale from the crypt. But as Michael Chabon’s marvelous introduction reminds us, the ghost story was once integral to the genre of the short story. Indeed, as he points out, it can be argued that the ghost story was the genre. Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol,’ Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’ most of the early short story writers wrote ghost stories as a matter of course. And the best writer of ghost stories, the acknowledged master, was M.R. James. In Casting the Runes, we have twenty one tales that, in Chabon’s words, ‘venture to the limits of the human capacity for terror and revulsion…
armed only with an umbrella and a very dry wit.’ The stories here represent the best of James’s work. They are set in the leisurely, late Victorian, middle class world of country houses, seaside inns, out of the way railway stations, and cathedral closes, where gentlemen of independent means and antiquarian tastes suddenly find themselves confronted by terrifying agents of supernatural malice. But what these tales are really about, writes Chabon, ‘is ultimately the breathtaking fragility of life, of ‘reality,’ of all the structures that we have erected to defend ourselves from our constant nagging suspicion that underlying everything is chaos, brutal and unreasoning.’ The tales in Casting the Runes are both chilling fun and, as Chabon concludes, ‘unmistakably works of art.’ Anyone who loves short fiction or who enjoys a good scare will find these stories an irresistible delight.

Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories

The only annotated edition of M. R. James’s writings currently available, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories contains the entire first two volumes of James s ghost stories, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. These volumes are both the culmination of the nineteenth century ghost story tradition and the inspiration for much of the best twentieth century work in this genre. Included in this collection are such landmark tales as Count Magnus, set in the wilds of Sweden; Number 13, a distinctive tale about a haunted hotel room; Casting the Runes, a richly complex tale of sorcery that served as the basis for the classic horror film Curse of the Demon; and Oh, Whistle, and I ll Come to You, My Lad, one of the most frightening tales in literature. The appendix includes several rare texts, including A Night in King s College Chapel, James s first known ghost story.

The Haunted Dolls’ House

Evil comes with many different faces. A macabre human drama is re enacted in a Gothic dolls’ house one night; a whistle awakens a force of unspeakable malevolence; an ancient curse is passed from person to person; a grisly crime is avenged from beyond the grave; the tomb of a Swedish count will not rest quietly. M R James’ chilling ghost stories reveal a world where the familiar becomes diabolical, the smallest object can lead to unimaginable horror, and evil brushes against everyday life in the most unexpected and sinister of ways.