Books by M. R. James
Classic Ghost Stories (Dover Thrift Editions: Gothic/Horror)
by Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, J. S. LeFanu, Mrs. Henry Wood, Amelia B. Edwards, Fitz-James O'Brien, Henry James
Assembled from the works of the finest masters of the genre, these compelling narratives promise to raise gooseflesh and accelerate pulses with their supernatural scenarios.
Featured stories include J. S. LeFanu's "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street," with a mysterious old mansion as the focal point; Mary E. Wilkins' "The Lost Ghost," in which a strange child's disturbing presence instills fear and foreboding in all those she encounters; Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Body-Snatchers"; "Mrs. Zant and the Ghost," by Wilkie Collins; and other gripping works by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Ralph Cram, Mrs. Henry Wood, Amelia B. Edwards, Fitz-James O'Brien, and M. R. James.
Rich in detail and ghoulish incidents, this modestly priced collection will thrill readers who appreciate tales of terror as well as devotees of well-crafted literature.
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Collected Ghost Stories: (OWC Hardback) (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)
by M. R. James
"I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mold, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own..."
Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M. R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and nighttime 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 and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb.
This edition presents all of James' published ghost stories, including the unforgettable "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and "Casting the Runes," and an appendix of James' writings on the ghost story. Darryl Jones' introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own.
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Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories (The Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James, Vol. 1)
by M. R. James
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.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Copies
No copies available.
Collected Ghost Stories (Oxford World's Classics)
'I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own...'
Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M. R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and 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 and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb.
This edition presents all of James's published ghost stories, including the unforgettable 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' and 'Casting the Runes', and an appendix of James's writings on the ghost story. Darryl Jones's introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own.
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The Haunted Doll's House and Other Ghost Stories (The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James, Vol. 2)
by M. R. James
Stories by a visionary master of supernatural fiction
In volume two of the only annotated edition of M. R. James's complete writings currently available, Penguin Classics brings together tales from James's final two works, A Thin Ghost and Others and A Warning to the Curious. In these stories, James continues his fearsome transformation of the ghost story from its nineteenth-century heritage, drawing upon his deep knowledge of medieval history and biblical curiosa. This edition features a number of little-known tales that have rarely been assembled, including “The Fenstation Witch,” presented here for the first time in a corrected text, a new translation of “Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories,” and a number of James’s essays.
Edited and with an introduction and notes by S. T. Joshi.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James, Fiction, Literary (Wildside Fantasy Classic)
by M. R. James
Product Description The details of horror are almost never explicit, the stories relying on a gentle, bucolic background to emphasise the awfulness of the otherworldly intrusions. James' style of writing can be considered as "gothic".After Jonathan Miller adapted "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" for Omnibus in 1968, several stories from the collection were adapted as the BBC's yearly Ghost Story for Christmas strand, including "Lost Hearts", "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", "The Ash-tree" and "Number 13". "Whistle and I'll Come to You" was also heavily adapted by Neil Cross for broadcast on Christmas Eve 2010.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. About the Author Montague Rhodes James (1862 - 1936), who published under the name M. R. James, was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905-18) and of Eton College (1918-36). Though James's work as a medievalist is still highly regarded, he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James's protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story.
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Vintage Minis: Ghosts
by M. R. James
A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be empty. A skeletal figure creeps closer and closer to the house where an unsuspecting family lie sleeping. In these chilling tales of the supernatural, M. R. James proves he is master of the ghost story.
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The Diary of Mr. Poynter A Ghost Story for Christmas
by M. R. James
While engrossed in an account of the death of a student obsessed with his own hair, a man leans down to absently pet his dog--oblivious of the true nature of the creature crouching beside him. This classic ghost story by M.R. James is a spooky holiday delight.
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The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
by M. R. James
90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books
There are many great English ghost stories, but they appear flimsy and emotionally spectral compared to the works of M.R. James. This selection gives the reader a flavour of his strange gifts. Often, the ghost is barely glimpsed and yet somehow sticks with the reader for years, making ordinary rooms or gardens or churches uncanny and threatening. Is that the kitchen cat? And what is it that terrible thing stalking about in the dolls' house?
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