Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

JAMES, Montague Rhodes (1862–1936). His greatly influential stories were first published together as an omnibus in 1931 entitled The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James, and this keystone work has been kept in print ever since, virtually without a break, by Edward Arnold, and recently (in paperback) Penguin. See also ‘Casting the Runes’ and Other Ghost Stories, selected and edited by Michael Cox (Oxford: The World’s Classics, 1987).

MRJ’s last two stories were reprinted for the first time in the 1970s: ‘A Vignette’ (1936) in The Sorceress in Stained Glass (1971; ed. Richard Dalby) and ‘The Experiment’ (1931) in The Thrill of Horror (1975; ed. Hugh Lamb). Both are included in Michael Cox’s annotated selection (see above).

Two other recently discovered pieces by M. R. James are: ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ (reprinted in Ghosts and Scholars 6, 1984, with an introduction by Michael Cox), and ‘A Night in King’s College Chapel’ (reprinted in Ghosts and Scholars 7, 1985, with an introduction by Michael Halls).

The most accessible biography, which also contains a full bibliography of the ghost stories, is Michael Cox’s M. R. James: An Informal Portrait (Oxford, 1983; Oxford Paperbacks, 19864).

BENSON, Edward Frederic (1867–1940), a very prolific author (his ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels are now more popular than ever) and long-time friend of MRJ, was a member of the Chitchat Society which heard the two original ‘ghost stories of an antiquary’ being read on 28 October 1893. Benson was the only other member of the Club at that meeting to achieve lasting fame, but very few of his own superb occult tales were distinctly Jamesian—one of the most reprinted is ‘Negotium Perambulans’. His four classic collections are The Room in the Tower (1912), Visible and Invisible (1923), Spook Stories (1928), and More Spook Stories (1934).

BOLITHO, Hector (1897–1974), was a New Zealand journalist who befriended the Prince of Wales in 1920, and in later years spent much of his time at Windsor producing many royal biographies. His meetings with MRJ at nearby Eton, recounted in his autobiography, may have encouraged him to pen a few Jamesian tales in the 1920s and 1930s. Among these are ‘The Crying Grate’ and ‘Cracky Miss Judith’.

BOSTON, (Mrs) Lucy Maria (b.1892) published her first book at the age of 62, and is best known for her series on Green Knowe, a strange haunted old house near Cambridge. She has only rarely produced Jamesian tales, two excellent examples being in anthologies edited by Kathleen Lines: ‘Curfew’ (in The House of the Nightmare and other Eerie Tales, 1967), and ‘Many Coloured Glass’ (in The Haunted and the Haunters. Tales of Ghosts, 1975). A monograph on Mrs Boston’s work, by Jasper Rose, was published in 1965.

BOSTON, Revd Noel (1910–66), a Norfolk vicar and local historian, wrote a few Jamesian stories in the early 1950s which were privately printed in booklet form (by G. Arthur Coleby of Dereham in 1954) under the title Yesterday Knocks. Most of his tales were reprinted 1960–2 in various issues of Supernatural Stories magazine under the pseudonyms ‘Noel Bartram’ and ‘Noel Bertram’.

BURRAGE, Alfred McLelland (1889–1956) wrote a vast amount of fiction and short stories from 1906 onwards, of which only a small selection appeared later in three fine collections: Some Ghost Stories (1927), with the Jamesian ‘Wrastlers’ End’ and ‘The Green Scarf’; Someone in the Room (by ‘Ex-Private X’, 1931); and Between the Minute and the Hour (1967). His greatest success was the novel War is War (1930), which gives the Tommy’s eye-view of the First World War.

CLARKE, Revd William Fairlie (1875–1950), the godson of MRJ’s father, wrote at least half a dozen ghost stories during the 1920s but never offered them for publication. Two of the best, ‘99 Bridge Street’ and ‘The Mystery of Chickerley Grange’, were published together by Rosemary Pardoe in the Haunted Library series (1982), and a third—‘Poor Nun of Burtisford’—appeared in Ghosts and Scholars 4.

CRISPIN, Edmund (1921–78), whose real name was Robert Bruce Montgomery, was an Oxford scholar, music teacher, and highly successful author of literary detective fiction. Always a great admirer of MRJ, some good Jamesian touches can be found in his first novel The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944: see Chapter 5, ‘Cave Ne Exeat’), and his short story collection Fen Country (1979).

DARE, Marcus Paul (1902–62), archaeologist and antiquarian, wrote one collection of uncanny tales, Unholy Relics, published in 1947 by Edward Arnold as part of the post-MRJ series which included Malden and Caldecott. Dare’s book was dedicated to Montague Summers. Notable among his tales are ‘The Demoniac Goat’ and ‘An Abbot’s Magic’. Shortly before his death, Dare gave an interesting talk on ‘Ghosts I Have Met’ for the BBC Home Service.

DE LA MARE, Walter (1873–1956), celebrated poet and writer of children’s books, is also noted for his memorable adult short stories. These were collected into several volumes, including The Connoisseur (1926), On the Edge (1930), Ghost Stories (Folio Society, 1956), and Eight Tales (Arkham House, 1971). Among his more Jamesian tales are ‘All Hallows’, ‘Crewe’, and ‘A:B:O’.

DICKINSON, William Croft (1897–1963), distinguished Scottish historian and archaeologist, died shortly before his collection Dark Encounters was published. This book was dubbed ‘Ghost Stories of a Scottish Antiquary’ by admirers. Some of the stories had appeared in an earlier collection, The Sweet Singers (1953), which was attractively illustrated by Joan Hassall.

GORDON, John (b.1929), has written a number of fantasy novels and short stories aimed at older children and mostly set in East Anglia. One of his short stories, ‘All the Children’ (in The Spitfire Grave, 1979), refers to a mysterious character named ‘James Rhodes Montague’; but the influence of MRJ is most evident in Gordon’s brilliant weird novel, House on the Brink (1970). A recent fine collection is Catch Your Death (1984).

HARVEY, William Fryer (1885–1937), was a master of the psychological horror story, the most famous being ‘The Beast with Five Fingers’ (1928) filmed in 1946. ‘The Dabblers’ and ‘The Ankardyne Pew’ have been much anthologized. Dr Harvey’s best tales were assembled into a collection by Maurice Richardson in 1946, and republished in an Aldine paperback in 1962.

HEARD, Henry Fitzgerald (1889–1971), philosopher and scientist, often used the pseudonym ‘Gerald Heard’ on British editions of his books. He was especially noted for his novels A Taste for Honey (1941) and The Black Fox (1950), and for two collections The Great Fog (1944) and The Lost Cavern (1948). The latter contains ‘The Cup’, and ‘The Chapel of Ease’—his best piece of fiction and in the view of Russell Kirk ‘the most impressive supernatural tale of recent years’.

JONES, Revd Keith Lanyon (b.1949), has continued the line of Malden, Woodforde, Boston, and other clergymen with a penchant for uncanny literature, with an impressive first collection, The Seven Deadly Sins, published in 1979. Among his best Jamesian tales are ‘Hush-a-by-Baby’ and ‘The Collector’, set in a haunted cathedral library.

KIRK, Russell (b.1918), is an American philosopher noted for The Surly Sullen Bell (1962), ‘Ten Stories and Sketches, Uncanny or Uncomfortable’, in which ‘the reader may find hints of M. R. James, Henry James, and even Jesse James’. The most (M. R.) Jamesian tale here is ‘What Shadows We Pursue’—others of note are ‘Ex Tenebris’ and ‘Beyond the Stumps’. These stories appeared in two retitled collections: Lost Lake (1964 and 1966) and The Princess of all Lands (Arkham House, 1979).

LAWRENCE, Margery (1889–1969), prolific writer of Gothic and romantic fiction (chiefly remembered today for The Madonna of Seven Moons), was also a believer in the occult: several of her fifty-odd supernatural tales were based on personal experiences. Among her Jamesian stories are ‘The Haunted Saucepan’ (from Nights of the Round Table, 1926) and ‘The Death Strap’ (from The Terraces of Night, 1932).

LEATHERBARROW, Canon Joseph Stanley (b.1908), was Rector of Martley, a small village in Worcestershire, from 1959 to 1972. An avid reader of MRJ’s ghost stories since boyhood, he used to read them to groups of young friends in his first parishes. When the supply ‘ran out’, he began to write his own. His collection of ghost stories, A Natural Body and A Spiritual Body, Some Worcestershire Encounters with the Supernatural, was published in Great Malvern in 1983. Contained therein are the Jamesian ‘The Stranger in the Scarf’ and ‘The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara’ (an improved version of Dare’s ‘Demoniac Goat’).

LEIBER, Fritz (b.1910), is the doyen of American fantasy writers. Several fine Jamesian touches can be detected in much of his work, including the novel Our Lady of Darkness (1977), which recalls both MRJ’s ‘A View from a Hill’ and ‘“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”’.

LORING, Cmdr Frederick George (1869–1951), naval hero and occasional writer, contributed one classic tale to the Pall Mall Magazine in December 1900—‘The Tomb of Sarah’—exactly five years after MRJ had contributed his early story ‘Lost Hearts’ to the same journal.

MABY, Joseph Cecil (b.1902), chemist and leading figure in the dowsing world, wrote one rare collection of ghost stories, By Stygian Waters, published in 1933. It was dedicated ‘to two masters of their art, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dr M. R. James of Eton, whose tales I have read and re-read with ever renewed delight and fear.’ Notable among Maby’s Jamesian tales are ‘The Return of Roderick St John’ and ‘The Douglas Fir’.

MUNBY, Alan Noel Latimer (1913–74), studied at King’s College, Cambridge, and later served as its librarian. His collection The Alabaster Hand (1949) was dedicated (in Latin) to MRJ. Although some of the tales are certainly not Jamesian, there are several good examples, including ‘The Tudor Chimney’ and the title story. The book reached a larger public when it was reprinted in paperback by Four Square in 1963.

NORTHCOTE, Amyas (1864–1923), was the son of a leading politician Sir Stafford Northcote and was a younger contemporary of MRJ at Eton. A Buckinghamshire J.P. during his later years, he could have been influenced by MRJ to compose his own enjoyable collection of tales, In Ghostly Company (1922).

ROPES, Arthur Reed (1859–1933), was a celebrated librettist who in his early days had been an older contemporary of MRJ at King’s College, Cambridge. His wonderfully atmospheric novel The Hole of the Pit (Edward Arnold, 1914), which appeared under his pseudonym ‘Adrian Ross’, was dedicated to ‘Montague Rhodes James, Provost of King’s and Teller of Ghost Stories’.

SMITH, Canon Basil Alec (1908–1969), was Rector of Holy Trinity, York, and Precentor of York Minster. His occasional ghost stories were saved for posterity by Russell Kirk and Stuart Schiff who published Smith’s The Scallion Stone in 1980. Of the five stories in the collection, the best are ‘The Propert Bequest’ and the title story.

TATHAM, Herbert Francis William (1861–1909), Eton schoolmaster, was a good friend—and tricycling companion—of MRJ; his sole collection of uncanny tales, The Footprints in the Snow, appeared in 1910 (with a memoir by A. C. Benson), a year after his death from an injury in the Swiss Alps.

WAKEFIELD, Herbert Russell (1888–1964), was one of the best, and most prolific, writers to continue the great tradition of the British ghost story after MRJ lessened his output in the late 1920s. Wakefield’s fine collections include They Return at Evening (1928), Old Man’s Beard (1929), and The Clock Strikes Twelve (1940); a selection of his Best Ghost Stories (edited by Richard Dalby) appeared in 1978 (US:1982). One of his best pieces of Jamesian writing can be found in the childhood anecdote of ‘Immortal Bird’.

WOODFORDE, Dr Christopher (1907–62), kinsman of the great clerical diarist and author of the best book on the stained glass of Norfolk, was Chaplain of New College, Oxford, and (like R. H. Malden before him) Dean of Wells. His excellent collection of ghost stories, A Pad in the Straw (1952), illustrated by Yunge-Bateman, reflects his love of East Anglia. Notable among his tales are ‘Richard’, ‘Cushi’, and ‘Lost and Found’. The book was reissued as an Aldine paperback in 1964.

The Ghosts and Scholars series, published annually since 1979 by the Haunted Library (Chester), contains many fine new Jamesian tales by David Rowlands, David Sutton, A. F. Kidd, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Shilston, Roger Johnson, and others.

Drawing by Brian Frost