M. R. James

In praise of… MR James
There are few who can hold a guttering candle to the marrow-chilling narratives of Montague Rhodes James

Editorial
The Guardian
Wednesday 29 December 2010

Pull up a chair. For now, the dark axis of the year, is traditionally the time for telling ghost stories and there are few who can hold a guttering candle to the marrow-chilling narratives of Montague Rhodes James. MR James had little time for benign spirits with sympathetic inclinations. His tales of the supernatural inhabit an altogether more sinister realm – of vengeful phantoms and, in one ingenious instance, a spectral room. Fittingly, given his association with King's College, Cambridge – first as a student, eventually as provost – James gave the first reading of his ghost stories at the Cambridge Chitchat Society in 1893. The story he chose – Canon Alberic's Scrapbook – trod the distinctive Jamesian path of a tale founded in historical fact and a glimpsed but never fully revealed horror lurking just out of sight. James's skilful hinting at fears buried in the awful unconscious is what makes his stories so compellingly unsettling. His talent at teasing the imagination is what makes even the most rational reader glance nervously beneath the bed at the conclusion of Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You. Occasionally, James's own fears surface – as in The Ash Tree, which could only have been written by an arachnophobe. The thread of sly humour that runs lightly through the best of his stories only further increases the sense of foreboding. So, pick up a copy of A Warning to the Curious, curl up by the fire and enter the clever and disturbing world of MR James. And that creaking door? Well, it's only the wind…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/29/mr-james-in-praise-of

Oh, Whistle And I'll Come to You, My Lad: http://www.fadl12200.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/owhis.html

See also: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GS.html