Collected Ghost Stories: (OWC Hardback) (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection) - Hardcover

James, M. R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198797362 ISBN 13: 9780198797364

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2017

Synopsis

'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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198797362
• ISBN 13: 9780198797364
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Jones Darryl