The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James

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M. R. James

Mystery & Suspense

Jul 28, 2018

An accomplished medievalist, Montague Rhodes James was a Cambridge don and provost at Eton, and his tales often center on a sedate scholar’s inadvertent encounter with the eerie. A mere three dozen stories constitute nearly all of James’s literary output, which he composed in his off-hours and often shared in Christmas readings to his students. No surprise, then, that a James story is just the thing for a winter’s evening read-aloud by a fireside, when the comfort of domestic security is challenged by the cozy threat of supernatural specters. No surprise, either, that the storytelling is invitingly uncomplicated, addressing the reader directly as it accumulates small, colorful digressions to establish a field of ordinariness that will be quietly transformed by the creeping sense of unexplained phenomena.

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Jane Huttner

Dec 5, 2019

I liked the Victorian age of this book. They are very subtle and not scary or gory.

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Candace Weddle Livingston

Feb 20, 2021

I have loved these stories since I was a teenager, but having just re-read them as an adult and a career academic, I appreciate them all the more. They tap into primal fears while also having a delicious veneer of history and antiquarianism.

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