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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $28.50

Format:
Hardback
512 pp.
135 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780198797364

Publication date:
April 2017

Imprint: OUP UK


Collected Ghost Stories

M. R. James
Edited by Darryl Jones

Series : Oxford World's Classics Hardcovers

'I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own...'

Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M. R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and night-time settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses, remote inns, ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings for unbearable menace, from creatures seeking retribution and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb.

This edition presents all of James's published ghost stories, including the unforgettable "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and "Casting the Runes", and an appendix of James's writings on the ghost story. Darryl Jones's introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own.

Readership : Readers of ghost stories, the gothic, the supernatural, lovers of Edwardian and Victorian literature, and students of English Literature in these disciplines, as well as the short story and Popular Literature.

Reviews

  • Review from previous edition: "an outstanding new edition"

    --Boyd Tonkin, The Independent 25/10/2013

  • "the definitive edition of James's stories...a treasure trove for every horror lover"

    --Politico

  • "perfect both for longstanding M. R. James fans or those new to his chilling tales"

    --The Oldie

  • "excellently introduced and annotated"

    --Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

  • "Wonderfully spooky classic stories released just in time for the drawing in of the evenings."

    --The Observer 27/10/2013

  • "In his introduction to the 2013 Oxford World Classics edition of MR James's Collected Ghost Stories, Darryl Jones cites the story Casting The Runes, in which a Mr Dunning, lying in bed in the dark, gropes for matches under his pillow."

    --Teddy Jamieson, Sunday Herald (Glasgow) 21/12/2014

Introduction
Select Bibliography
Chronology of M. R. James
Canon Alberic's Scrap-book
Lost Hearts
The Mezzotint
The Ash-Tree
Number 13
Count Magnus
'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
A School Story
The Rose Garden
The Tractate Middoth
Casting the Runes
The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
Martin's Close
Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance
The Residence at Whitminster
The Diary of Mr Poynter
An Episode of Cathedral History
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance
Two Doctors
The Haunted Dolls' House
The Uncommon Prayer-Book
A Neighbour's Landmark
A View from a Hill
A Warning to the Curious
An Evening's Entertainment
There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
Rats
After Dark in the Playing Fields
Wailing Well
The Experiment
The Malice of Inanimate Objects
A Vignette
Appendix: M. R. James on Ghost Stories
Explanatory Notes

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Darryl Jones's other publications include Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film (London: Arnold; New York: OUP, 2002), Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson (OUP, 2014) and, forthcoming for OUP, Arthur Conan Doyle's Gothic Tales.

Horror Stories - Edited by Darryl Jones
Collected Ghost Stories - M. R. James
Edited by Darryl Jones

Special Features

  • The only one-volume edition to include all the published stories included in M. R. James's 1931 Collected Ghost Stories, plus three uncollected tales.
  • Includes a lively introduction that explores James's conservative, donnish background and the character traits that contributed to the extraordinary power of his closely focused tales, whose terrifying narratives are discussed.
  • The most accurate and comprehensive annotations to James's stories elucidate his antiquarian, classical, and literary references as well as providing interesting publishing history details.
  • An Appendix reprints the prefaces and introductions to James's individual story collections together with three short articles by James about the ghost story, which present the fullest first-hand account of his approach to the genre.
  • Up-to-date bibliography and chronology.