The Ghost Stories of M.R. James

The Ghost Stories of M.R. James collects the tales that best illustrate the author's quiet mastery of the ghost story form. Running through each of these stories is a slowly escalating sense of unease and dread, which ultimately shifts into the wildly uncanny. James’ characters exist in a world of ancient objects whose atrocious histories begin to repeat when they are disturbed, and the blinkered repression common to James’ narratives only amplifies the shock of the spectral appearance.

M.R. James (1862-1936) was an English medievalist scholar best remembered as the author of many of the finest ghost stories in the English language. Roger Luckhurst is a professor of modern literature whose books include Late Victorian Gothic Tales and Zombies: A Cultural History, as well as books on The Shining and Alien for the BFI Film Classics series. He has also edited several of the Oxford World's Classics, including H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, in addition to writing for The Guardian.