Collected Ghost Stories

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies. ‘I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own, and moving slowly over it, and of several – I don’t know how many – legs and arms or tentacles or something clinging to my body.’ M.R. James is probably the finest ghost-story writer England has ever produced. These tales are not only classics of their genre, but are also superb examples of beautifully-paced understatement, convincing background and chilling terror. As well as the preface, there is a fascinating tail-piece by M.R. James, “Stories I Have Tried To Write”, which accompanies these thirty tales. Among them are ‘Casting the Runes’, ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll come to you, My Lad’, ‘The Tractate Middoth’, ‘The Ash Tree’ and ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook’. “There are some authors one wishes one had never read in order to have the joy of reading them for the first time. For me, M.R. James is one of these.” – . Ruth Rendall AUTHOR: M(ontague) R(hodes) James (1862-1936), the son of a Kent curate, enjoyed a glittering academic career, and was acknowledged as a leading authority on medieval manuscripts and biblical apocrypha. By way of diversion, over a period of time he wrote thirty four of what are acknowledged to be the best ghost stories ever written. The passing of time does not lessen their popularity or their ability to chill, and our edition of ‘Collected Ghost Stories’ remains the best-selling book in the series.