Collected Ghost Stories

Product Description

Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English M. R. James is an unlikely producer of ghost-stories. An eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton & Cambridge his classic supernatural tales have lost none of their power to unsettle & disturb. They draw on the terrors of the everyday in which documents & objects unleash terrible forces often in closed rooms & 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 & harm. Stories that were first read aloud in Jamess study late on Christmas Eve have the power to haunt us still. This book presents all of Jamess published ghost stories including the unforgettable Oh Whistle & Ill Come to You My Lad & Casting the Runes & an appendix of Jamess writings on the ghost story. Darryl Joness introduction & notes provide a fascinating insight into Jamess background & his mastery of the genre he made his own.