Collected Ghost Stories

This collection gathers M.R. James's ghost stories, written mainly in the first decades of the twentieth century. Typical narrators are antiquaries, librarians, and clergymen who handle a manuscript, a whistle, a mezzotint, or a church monument and release something that follows them. Settings are East Anglian coasts, cathedral closes, university rooms, and country inns. Recurring pieces include Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book, Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad, Casting the Runes, and A Warning to the Curious. The hauntings are brief, malevolent, and tied to an object or a trespass on the past. The book is a set of independent antiquarian tales, not a novel and not a treatise on folklore.

Bound in grey cloth blocked with a wrap-around colour image. Black slipcase.