Product Description

This selection of twenty-one short stories by M.R. James--a first-class writer of supernatural fiction--represents his best work, including "Count Magnus," "The Rose Garden," "The Uncommon Prayer-book," "Rats," "The Malice of Inanimate Objects," and "A Vignette," as well as the title story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113322 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author
M.R. James was one of the most accomplished scholars of his generation, a brilliant, internationally known authority on early Christian manuscripts. He was in turn a Fellow, Dean, and Provost of Kings College, Cambridge, and then finally the Provost of Eton, where he died a much-loved and revered figure in 1936. Michael Cox is a senior commissioning editor with Oxford University Press.

Customer Reviews

Some of the very best of MR James
I simply had to have this book. I have started on a creative writing career hoping to specialise in supernatural fiction. So who better to read than the acknowedged doyen of the genre? MR James was an absolute master of the craft. Many years ago the BBC dramatised one of his short stories every Christmas Eve and continued the practice for several years. Even as a mature adult these plays used to scare me witless! Michael Hordern's wonderful depiction of paralysis in sheer terror at the end of "Whistle and I'll come to you my lad", is indelibly engraved in my memory. But the television can only depict one man's interpretaion. Believe me, the imagination does so much more. So the stories are infinitely more enthralling. This volume contains all the greats: the nightmarish Count Magnus, Whistle.., Number 13, the haunting Mezzotint and perhaps the most chilling ghost story ever written, A Warning to the Curious. The thing about MR James was that he wrote so well and with such a sensitivity for how to make the supernatural thriller "work". Apart from the inevitably dated settings, it is entirely possible to imagine the events he relates as a plausible part of one's own daily experience! This volume contains a very useful essay (Explanatory Notes)by the author on the elements of the most effective ghost stories. The valuable insights offered therein are alone worth the price. This volume contains a representative sample of his best known work and I am compelled to recommend it in the highest terms. But a warning to "the curious": this is potent story telling. The reader who having once picked it up, will not be the same when they put it down again; if they can (heh, heh, heh,heh).

The Mood of the Macabre
M.R. James is the quintessential, literary ghost story writer. His stories begin with such dark innocence, the reader wanders along, enjoying the prose, while the atmosphere thickens with the macabre. He is very Victorian in his approach, his paragraphs are skillyfully crafted. The only trouble the novice reader will encounter is adapting to his scholarly attention to detail. His prose is magnificent but heavy. The thrill is in the patient reading of his stories. Think of reading M.R. James in terms of drinking port... you sip port, you linger with it, you appreciate its aromas, its texture. You wouldn't think of knocking back a beautiful glass of port? No...Pick this book up, indulge yourself slowly with these stories and soon enough, ghostly memories will fill your imagination. The moods he casts heightens the pleasures of both the mind and the spirit.

Horror, Lite
More than at any other time since the era of the gladiators, entertainment in America today seems obsessed with murder, mayhem and gore. The Chainsaw Disembowelment Scene has been used in so many movies that it's almost a cliché, and I'm so jaded with seeing cadavers that I refuse to turn-on my TV.

How different are these stories by M. R. James. There are no monsters such as in H. P. Lovecraft, and the spectres which do appear never get to perform any injury - it's always a close call.

The focus here is on suspense. Not, though, that there are any surprises. We know that the strange old tome will yield its dreadful secret; that room 13 of the inn will be infested with demons; that the druid slide-whistle will summon some ghastly phantasm.

The pleasure of reading the work of M. R. James lies in his pretty writing - the lost art of the English language in its perfected form. Reading these stories is analogous to listening to a great musician perform florid music which is always in a minor key.