a b c d e f Pardoe, Rosemary (2001). "The James Gang". Meddling with Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James. London: British Library. pp. 267–87. ISBN 0-7123-1125-4 James, M. R. (1925). Eton and King's. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 13–97. ISBN 978-1-108-03053-3 James's work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded, [1] but he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some consider among the best in the genre. He redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. Because his protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story". [2] Early life [ edit ]

Benson, Edward Frederic (1920). Our Family Affairs, 1867–1896. London, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Ltd. p. 231. Stewart, Helen (23 December 2013). "M. R. James and the tradition of Christmas ghost stories". BBC Arts and Culture . Retrieved 27 December 2013. Smith, Clark Ashton (February 1934). "The Weird Works of M. R. James", The Fantasy Fan. Reprinted in Smith, Planets and Dimensions. Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1973.James's statements about his actual beliefs about ghosts are ambiguous. He wrote, "I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me." [22] Views on literature and politics [ edit ] In his screenplay for The Signalman Andrew Davies adds scenes of the traveller's nightmare-plagued nights at an inn, and reinforces the ambiguity of the traveller-narrator by restructuring the ending and matching his facial features with those of the spectre. [10] The film also makes use of visual and aural devices. For example, the appearance of the spectre is stressed by the vibrations of a bell in the signalbox and a recurring red motif connects the signalman's memories of a train crash with the danger light attended by a ghostly figure. [10]

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Peterhouse. Cambridge University Press, 1899. Reissued by the publisher, 2009. ISBN 978-1-108-00307-0Cox, Michael. M. R. James: An Informal Portrait. Oxford University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-19-211765-3. The composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wrote two pieces for piano with a link to James: Quaere reliqua hujus materiei inter secretiora (1940), inspired by "Count Magnus", and St. Bertrand de Comminges: "He was laughing in the tower" (1941), inspired by "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book". BBC Suffolk feature about M. R. James – concerning the author's links with Great Livermere and Suffolk Farquhar, Simon (30 June 2015). "Ghosts of Christmas past: M.R. James, Lawrence Gordon Clark and A Ghost Story for Christmas". Sight & Sound . Retrieved 2 September 2016. a b Pfaff, Richard W., "Montague Rhodes James", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online Edition). Oxford University Press. September 2004. [1]. Retrieved 2010-08-15.

The university provides settings for several of his tales. Apart from medieval subjects, James toured Europe often, including a memorable 1884 tour of France in a Cheylesmore tricycle, [10] studied the classics and appeared very successfully in a staging of Aristophanes' play The Birds, with music by Hubert Parry. His ability as an actor was also apparent when he read his new ghost stories to friends at Christmas time. [ citation needed] Scholarly works [ edit ] M. R. James's scholarly work uncovered the burial places of the abbots of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in 1903 (from front to rear): Edmund of Walpole (1248–1256); Henry of Rushbrooke (1235–1248); Richard of the Isle of Ely (1229–1234); Samson (1182–1211); and Ording (1148–1157). [11] Wagenknecht, Edward. Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction. Greenwood Press, 1991. ISBN 0-313-27960-8. Latin Infancy Gospels: A New Text, With a Parallel Version from Irish. Cambridge University Press, 1927. Mark Gatiss's films The Tractate Middoth, The Dead Room, Martin's Close and The Mezzotint were released together as "Ghost Stories" in October 2022.

After an infamous demonologist is ridiculed on a television programme, its producer soon finds herself targeted by malevolent supernatural forces. [22] Bloom, Clive. "M. R. James and His Fiction." in Clive Bloom, ed., Creepers: British Horror and Fantasy in the Twentieth Century. London and Boulder CO: Pluto Press, 1993, pp.64–71. Comedian and writer John Finnemore is a fan of the ghost stories of M. R. James. [46] His radio sketch series John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, first broadcast in 2011, features the recurring character of a storyteller (a fictionalised version of Finnemore) who tells tall tales partly influenced by M. R. James's ghost stories. During the ninth series broadcast in 2021, which underwent a format change due to the coronavirus pandemic, Oswald 'Uncle Newt' Nightingale, analogous with Finnemore's storyteller character, meets M. R. James during the Christmas of 1898 as a young boy, who proceeds to tell him the story of The Rose Garden. Later in Uncle Newt's life (or earlier in the series), he tells an iteration of said story whilst babysitting Deborah and Myra Wilkinson. In 2003, Radio 4 broadcast The House at World's End by Stephen Sheridan. A pastiche of James's work, it contained numerous echoes of his stories while offering a fictional account of how he became interested in the supernatural. The older James was played by John Rowe, and the younger James by Jonathan Keeble.