M.R. James

M.R. James

M.R. James (no relation!) (1862-1936) was a linguist, medievalist and biblical scholar, who was provost of King's College, Cambridge, and (from 1918) of Eton. His first collection of stories (Ghost Stories of an Antiquary) appeared in 1904, followed by More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary in 1911, both collected in the 1931 edition of the Collected Stories. Like James' Turn of the Screw Montague Rhodes James' stories should be seen as part of the late-Victorian and Edwardian vogue for stories of ghosts, fantasy and the supernatural, including writers such as Walter de la Mare, Walter Machen and, in America, Algernon Blackwood. As Margaret Drabble comments, M.R. James' stories have remained lastingly popular because of their "masterly combination of scholarly control and antiquarian detail with suggestions of underlying supernatural horror". The best known of the stories is probably the highly anthologised 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad', but other stories have been filmed for television (generally shown on late on Christmas Eve as part of the BBC's staple Christmas fare). A common device of an M.R. James story is to follow a bachelor antiquarian's pursuit of knowledge, driven solely by curiosity, usually travelling alone in East Anglia or the Fens, who stumbles across a dark secret or past crime, and comes face to face with "something" or "someone". M.R. James, unlike Henry James, is not particularly interested in the psychology of his characters (see David Punter), but rather on the creation of a state of fear in the mind of the reader. This is achieved in sentences like the following: "I was pursued by the very vivid impression that wet lips were whispering into my ear with great rapidity and emphasis for some time together", or this line from 'Casting the Runes' (subsequently filmed in the 1950s as Night of the Demon) - [Dunning puts his hand under the pillow to find the watch,] "only it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being." This type of writing, involving the disparity between prosaic ordinariness and the ironic suggestion of "something darker" is, I believe, highly effective in its creation of the mood and atmosphere of the supernatural. Other critics, and David Punter is one of these, are less appreciative, and see his writings as playing with the conventions of Gothic writing with a kind of tired predictability and familiarity. What you think of them is, of course, for you to decide! We will concentrate on 'Casting the Runes'

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