Collected Ghost Stories [Paperback]

Montague Rhodes James (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1999

Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (August 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1853260533
• ISBN-13: 978-1853260537
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,956,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories in this collection, September 28, 2000

By 

Martin Fisher (Nashville, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collected Ghost Stories (Paperback)

Love this book and, as with any collection, thought a specific listing of all thirty included short works might be helpful to potential buyers.

Canon Alberic's Scrapbook; Lost Hearts; The Mezzotint; The Ash Tree; Number 13; Count Magnus; 'Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad'; The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas; A School Story; The Rose Garden; The Tractate Middoth; Casting The Runes; The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral; Martin's Close; Mr. Humphreys And His Inheritance; The Residence At Whitminster; The Diary Of Mr. Paynter; An Episode Of Cathedral History; The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance; Two Doctors; The Haunted Doll's House; The Uncommon Prayer-Book; A Neighbor's Landmark; A View From A Hill; A Warning To The Curious; An Evenings Entertainment; There Was A Man Dwealt By A Churchyard; Rats; After Dark In The Playing Fields; Wailing Well; Stories I Have Tried To Write

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ghost stories that REALLY chill the blood, April 24, 1999

By 

John Dennis ([e-mail]) (Bishop's Stortford, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Collected Ghost Stories (Paperback)

Some of the subtlest ghost stories ever written and all the more chilling for that. James never piles on the horror as, say, Lovecraft does but plants fears in your mind that will keep you from sleep: whispering voices, the touch of a cold hand in the darkness, an unseen cat brushing your legs.

James's fictional world, which owes something to Dickens, was based on the world he lived in, of Cambridge scholars exploring old libraries or churches or country houses. In such places, there are secrets hidden for centuries, only waiting for the careless unbeliever to open the door behind which they are lurking.

Try some of the classics like 'Casting the Runes' or 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' or, better, splash out on the Collected Stories. The quality is very high, with no more than three or four inferior ones in the whole book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Without a doubt the best collection of ghost stories, August 5, 2002

By 

K Scheffler (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collected Ghost Stories (Paperback)

First published in 1931, Colected Ghost Stories is a collection of most of M.R. James much revered stories. These stories were all first written for publication in magazines or for his famous Christmas readings, and were subsequently collected into four seperate volumes: Ghoast Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), and A Warning to the Curious (1925). Three stories that were published in magazines following the first publication of this work, and do not appear in this reprint; they are: The Experiment, The Malice of Inanimate Objects, and A Vignette.

James' skill for conceiving and presenting ghost stories seems to have developed at relatively young age, and his reading of some of his stories at King's College at Christmastime was a quite popular event. But ghost stories were, unfortunately, not James' priority; he was an antiquarian, and much respected one at that. He was also a noted linguist, paleographer, medievalist and biblical scholar--fields that all influenced his stories.

While it is safe to say that these ghost stories are among the best ever written, their style and subject matter are still a matter of taste. So it is difficult to catagorically recommend this book, but I doubt that any lover of ghost stories will be able to put this book down without difficulty after sampling but a story or two.