M. R. James

Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936), medievalist and Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, defined the English antiquarian ghost story: the dusty archive, the unwelcome discovery, the thing that should have been left alone. He read new tales aloud to friends at Christmas; “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” and “Lost Hearts” were among the earliest.

About

On 28 October 1893 M.R. James read aloud at King’s the first two ghost stories he would publish: “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” drawn from his Continental antiquarian travels, and “Lost Hearts,” with its nursery rhyme of hearts and pins. James McBryde, his student and illustrator, heard them in those rooms; this volume reproduces the surviving manuscripts of the readings that began James’s career as a ghost-story writer.

Edition Details

• Limited to 200 numbered copies; first edition published 28 October 1993.
• Bound in pictorial boards; cover title Two Ghost Stories: A Centenary by James McBryde; illustrated throughout by McBryde, including two drawings for Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book; no dust jacket.
• Information from a review in Ghosts & Scholars #17, 1994.
• Catalogued on FantLab and ISFDB.