Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James

His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, was published to great acclaim by Edward Arnold in 1904, followed by several equally celebrated volumes establishing him as the foremost writer of the genre, still arguably unsurpassed. Told initially as a diversion for the Chit-Chat Society at King’s College, their notoriously effective horrors soon found James published in a realm far beyond the dusty manuscripts that occupied much of his time. In spite of his myriad successes, it is his ghost stories that have guaranteed the writer posterity, exerting a growing influence on writers, filmmakers and artists of all sorts. An unparalleled academic career saw him take the reins as provost of the college in 1905, steering it through some of its most difficult years, before returning to Eton as provost in 1918 until his death. He studied initially at Temple Grove preparatory school before successfully traversing the well-worn route from Eton to King’s College, Cambridge.

Born in Goodnestone, Kent in 1862, the writer grew up in Suffolk under the intellectual influence of his clergyman father. James’s life was largely without misstep and littered with academic achievement. Graveyards featured variously in James’s macabre stories, an obvious regular for tales of the supernatural, but if such a resting place could be said to summarize the writer’s eerie atmospheres, it would not be a fictional one of his own creation but the real one he has occupied since his death in 1936 at the age of 73. It is situated at the point where the town begins to fade, fragmenting into the surrounding countryside and meadows along the Thames. It is not an oft-visited place, being a little out of the way and adjacent to the crumbling, residential walls of Eton College in Windsor. James, the noted antiquarian and celebrated writer of ghost stories, rests quietly today in a graveyard.

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James