Ghost Stories

This collection presents M. R. James's antiquarian ghost stories, in which scholars, clergymen, and collectors disturb objects or places that should have been left alone. Settings run from cathedrals, college rooms, and country churches to inns and lonely coasts. A typical tale begins with a manuscript, a carving, or a curiosity and ends with a visitation that is precise, malevolent, and briefly seen. James writes in a dry, documentary voice that treats the supernatural as something recorded after the fact. The book is a gathering of independent stories, not a novel, and its unity is the collision of learned curiosity with older, unfriendly powers.

Bound in cloth blocked with a design by Neil Gower. Metallic slipcase.