Profile of M.R. James on Famous Like Me

Montague Rhodes James, (August 1, 1862–June 12, 1936). A noted medieval scholar and Provost of King's College, Cambridge, he is best remembered today for his ghost stories. These 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. 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 relatively well-known 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.

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.

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.

Whilst M. R. 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.

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