In addition to writing his own stories, James championed the works of Sheridan Le Fanu, whom he viewed as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories", [21] editing and supplying introductions to Madame Crowl's Ghost (1923) and Uncle Silas (1926). The adaptations, although remaining true to the spirit of M.R. James, make alterations to suit the small screen - for example, A Warning to the Curious avoids the convoluted plot structure of M. R. James's original, opting for a more linear construction and reducing the number of narrators. In addition, the central character, Paxton, is changed from a young, fair-haired innocent who stumbles across the treasure to a middle-aged character driven by poverty to seek the treasure and acting in full awareness of what he is doing. [9] After the first two adaptations, both by Clark, the tales were adapted by a number of playwrights and screenwriters. For The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Clark recalls John Bowen's script "took some liberties with the story—which made it for the better I think...It's really quite a funny story until it gets nasty, although the threat is always there. James has a mordant sense of humour, and it's good to translate that into cinematic terms when you can. I'd always wanted to do a medium scene, and John came up with a beauty." [17] As translator: Forty-Two Stories, by Hans Christian Andersen, translated and with an introduction by M. R. James. 1930. The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Ghost Stories. 2006. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by S. T. Joshi.

Wigley, Samuel (3 April 2014). "Ghost Stories at Christmases past". BFI features . Retrieved 31 October 2014. 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. Aubrey Judd, veteran radio presenter of The Dead Room, soon realises that elements of his own past are not as dead and buried as he perhaps hoped. [38] [41] James perfected a method of story-telling which has since become known as Jamesian. The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following elements:

Whether linked to biblical references, runic scripts or medieval artefacts, out from the shadows they come, unholy spirits hungry for revenge. They reflect James’ own view of apparitions: “The ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.” Few of the ghosts of M.R. James manifest classic ghostly characteristics, although he uses glimpses of distant tattered drapery, apparently in swift pursuit, to heart-stopping effect in “’Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’”, along with the now infamous “horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen”. My introduction to the fiction of M.R. James is Collected Ghost Stories. I'm leaving my rating undeclared because while I abandoned this at the 35% mark, don't believe it deserves a one-star rating. Montague Rhodes James was a scholar and provost at a number of universities in England, but it was his post at King's College from 1905 to 1918 when he began an annual holiday tradition: writing a ghost story! James would invite his colleagues and students to his rooms on Christmas Eve and proceed to scare the hell out of them. So far, so good! 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. By now it should be apparent that M. R. James developed a clear formula for his ghost stories, which usually runs: bachelor who is either a scholar or collector of antiquities (or something history-related) comes into possession of an object from the past and then wishes he hadn’t.

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. A Warning to the Curious, The Signalman and Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You were released as individual VHS cassettes and Region 2 DVDs by the British Film Institute in 2002 and 2003. [57] [58] A number of the adaptations were made available in Region 4 format in Australia in 2011 and The Signalman is included as an extra on the Region 1 American DVD release of the 1995 BBC production of Hard Times. For Christmas 2011, the BFI featured the complete 1970s films in their Mediatheque centres. [59] Weighell, Ron. Dark Devotions: M. R. James and the Magical Tradition, Ghosts and Scholars 6 (1984):20–30 James, M. R. (1925). Eton and King's. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 151–153; ISBN 978-1-108-03053-3

Morgan, Chris (1985). "H. Russell Wakefield". In Bleiler, E. F., ed., Supernatural Fiction Writers. New York: Scribner's. pp. 617–622. ISBN 0-684-17808-7 H. Russell Wakefield's story " 'He Cometh and He Passeth By! '" (1928) is a homage to James's "Casting the Runes". [39] The BFI released the complete set of Ghost Story for Christmas films plus related works such as both versions of Whistle and I'll Come to You on Region 2 DVD in 2012, in five volumes as well as a box set, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of M. R. James's birth. [60]

Wheatley, Helen (2006). Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-7149-2. The Turn of the Screw (1898), a novella by Henry James (no relation to M. R. James), was adapted as a feature-length drama by Sandy Welch and broadcast on BBC One on 30 December 2009. [56] Title James is best known for his ghost stories, but his work as a medievalist scholar was prodigious and remains highly respected in scholarly circles. Indeed, the success of his stories was founded on his antiquarian talents and knowledge. His discovery of a manuscript fragment led to excavations in the ruins of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, in 1902, in which the graves of several twelfth-century abbots described by Jocelyn de Brakelond (a contemporary chronicler) were rediscovered, having been lost since the Dissolution of the Monasteries. [12] [13] He published a detailed description of the sculptured ceiling bosses of the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral in 1911. This included drawings of all the bosses in the north walk by C. J. W. Winter. [14] His 1917 edition of the Latin hagiography of Æthelberht II of East Anglia, king and martyr, [15] remains authoritative. I’m looking forward to this years tale (though its original story written by Mark Gatiss this time), along with repeats of Lost Hearts and The Ash Tree.Lists of manuscripts formerly in Peterborough Abbey library: with preface and identifications. Oxford University Press, 1926. Reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-108-01135-8