M. R. James

Montague Rhodes James (August 1, 1862, Goodnestone Parsonage, Kent, England –June 12, 1936), who published under the byline M. R. James, was a noted medieval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge, best remembered today for his ghost stories in the classic Victorian Yuletide vein.

Writings

His ghost stories were published in a series of collections: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), A Warning to the Curious and other Ghost Stories (1925). Following an English tradition, many of the thirty or so tales were penned as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to gatherings of friends.

The stories perfected several key elements of the classical ghost story. These include plot elements: a bucolic setting in a small village, rural community or venerable university; a nondescript and rather naive gentleman scholar as protagonist; and the discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow calls down the wrath, or at least unwelcome attention, of a supernatural menace, usually from beyond the grave. James also perfected the literary technique of the genre: narrating supernatural events principally through inference and suggestion and letting his reader fill in the blanks; and focusing on the quotidian details of his settings and characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater relief.

Despite famously calling for writers to employ such 'reticence' in their work, paradoxically many of James's tales depict scenes and images of savage and often disturbing violence. Children are usually the victims. For example, in Lost Hearts pubescent children are drugged by a sinister dabbler in the occult who then cuts their hearts out from their still-living bodies. This recurrent theme of child abuse is just one of the fascinating psychological undercurrents which exists in James's work. Others include James's fear of women, spiders and hair, and his authorial revulsion of tactile contact with other people. As the late Nigel Kneale said in the introduction to the Folio Society edition of 'Ghost Stories Of M.R. James':

"In an age where every man is his own psychologist, M.R. James looks like rich and promising material.... There must have been times when it was hard to be Monty James."

H. P. Lovecraft was a great enthusiast, extolling the stories as the peak of the ghost story form in his definitive essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1925-27). Another renowned fan of James in the horror and fantasy genre was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote an essay on him. Author John Bellairs paid homage to James by incorporating plot elements borrowed from James' ghost stories into several of his own juvenile mysteries.

While James is best remembered for his ghost stories, his output of medieval scholarship was phenomenal. He catalogued many of the manuscript libraries of the Cambridge and Oxford colleges. Among his other scholarly works, he wrote The Apocalypse in Art, which placed illuminated Apocalypse manuscripts into families. He also translated the New Testament Apocrypha.

Media adaptations

There have been numerous radio and television adaptations of James stories, mostly in Britain. Two of the best-known and most highly reputed of these TV dramas, Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968) and A Warning to the Curious (1972), are available on DVD from the British Film Institute. The BBC, in a long-standing tradition, used to broadcast a reading of an M. R. James story each Christmas. This tradition was resurrected in December 2005, when BBC4 broadcast a new dramatised version of James's story "A View from a Hill". The next M. R. James story to be adapted and broadcast on BBC4 (over Christmas 2006) will be "Number 13".

In the 1980s, a series of four double audio cassettes was released by Argo Records (UK) featuring nineteen unabridged M. R. James stories narrated by Michael Hordern. The tapes were titled Ghost Stories (1982), More Ghost Stories (1984), A Warning to the Curious (1985), and No. 13 and Other Ghost Stories (1988). ISIS Audio Books also released two collections of unabridged M.R. James stories, this time narrated by Nigel Lambert. These tapes were titled A Warning to the Curious and Other Tales (four audio cassettes, six stories, March 1992) and Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (three audio cassettes, eight stories, December 1992).

The only notable film version to date has been a British adaptation by Jacques Tourneur of "Casting the Runes", under the rather more attention-catching title of Night of the Demon (1957; U.S. title: Curse of the Demon). While somewhat more literal than the original story, which was loosely based on the foul reputation of Aleister Crowley, the film is generally considered one of the high points of the horror film. Opinion is, however, divided on the merits of the rather un-Jamesian decision (allegedly against Tourneur's wishes) to explicitly show a special effects demon with a bulb-fingered design inspired by medieval woodcuts.

The first stage version of Casting the Runes was performed at the Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds, England on 9th-10th June 2006 by the Pandemonium Theatre Company.[*[1]

In extension to the BBC tradition of broadcasting an M. R. James story each Christmas, Nunkie Theatre Company are presenting two of M. R. James's tales, Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book and The Mezzotint at the New End Theatre in Hampstead in December 2006 and January 2007.

Influence

The stories of M. R. James have influenced many of today's great supernatural writers, including Stephen King (The Shining, etc.) and Ramsey Campbell (Ancient Images).

Family

Montague Rhodes James was the uncle of Robert Rhodes James, a 20th century British historian and Conservative member of parliament.

References

• Cox, Michael M.R.James: An Informal Portrait. Oxford University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-19-211765-3.
• Sullivan, Jack. Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story From Le Fanu to Blackwood. Ohio University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-8214-0374-5.
• General Editors: Christopher Roden and Barbara Roden. A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings. Ash Tree Press, 2001. ISBN 1-55310-024-7.

External links

• A complete chronological bibliography of all of his writings hosted by the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences
• Night of the the Demon - at the Internet Movie Database
• Ghosts & Scholars - exhaustive online magazine devoted to James and related literature and writers
• Works by M. R. James at Project Gutenberg
• A collection of scholarly essays on various aspects of M. R. James's supernatural fiction
• Nunkie Theatre Company- a Cambridge-based theatre company, presenting two M. R. James tales in London in December 2006 and January 2007
• The Haunted River - essays on M.R. James and his ghost stories