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M. R. James
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Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (Collins Classics) Kindle Edition

by M. R. James (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.1 out of 5 stars 213 ratings

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

‘At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires’

M.R. James’ ghost stories are brimming with delicate horror. They take place in the quiet corners of churches, and between the dusty shelves of esteemed college libraries. But when Professor Parkin discovers a whistle in a Templar ruin, or Sir Richard Fell inherits a country manor with a horrifying history, malevolent forces are unleashed. Something half-glimpsed, something not of this world, is preparing to disturb the silence.

Having terrified generations since its first publication in 1904, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is a collection that will haunt the reader’s imagination long after the lights have gone out.

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  • Customer reviews:
    4.1 out of 5 stars 213 ratings

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M. R. James

M. R. James

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M. R. JAMES lives with his wife, Janet, and their two dogs on a small farm in a rural southern Indiana county with more wildlife for neighbors than local residents. A published freelance writer of Western and murder mystery short stories while still a teenager, he launched his lengthy award-winning career as a professional journalist working for daily newspapers in Indiana and his native Illinois. M. R. was a Sports and City Editor, Feature Writer, and the Founder/Editor of BOWHUNTER, a special interest magazine for archery hunters. M. R. also taught basic and creative writing classes for three separate Indiana universities. A member of the national Archery Hall of Fame, he’s the author of ten published books and co-author or editor of several others. The germ of his idea for this first novel, "Dream Killer," appeared while living 16 years in northwestern Montana’s scenic Flathead Valley. His latest archery hunting book, "Bowhunting Gospel" (from the book of M. R. James), is the result of his six-decade passion for hunting deer and other North American big game animals with the bow and arrow.

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4.1 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Baron Scarpia
    5.0 out of 5 stars Leave your preconceptions at the door
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 November 2004
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    Mr James was born in 1862. He was the son of a clergyman. He became a biblical scholar and vice-chancellor of Cambridge University. So you might expect from his life and his writing style that his stories are sedate things that the Victorian reader could read without too much upset. They would be free of troubling undertones, macabre inages, they would be comforting.
    You'd be dreadfully wrong. The first story in this collection is Lost Hearts, a brutal and twisted story of scholarly detatchment, unethical experiments and gory murder. Going through the book we discover other classics showing just how physically and mentally violent James' imagination could be. There's the desperate attempt to shake the curse in Casting the Runes, the deadening claustrophobia of The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral, and the final story, Wailing Well, stuns the reader by beginning as a comedy and ending so blackly that few Hollywood horror films, shall we say, would dare to film it as written.
    This is not sedate. It has an undeniable power that lingers after the book has been shut. I would actually put it above Lovecraft. There are weak points, it must be said; several times stories don't seem to get going before they end, creating a sense of anticlimax. But this does not detract from the achievements made in the other stories, and it's not going to stop me giving the collection five stars.
    40 people found this helpful
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  • D. Spencer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Spooky Stuff
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 March 2005
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    Having seen the short season of MR James classics on television at Christmas, I decided to keep the tradition of ghostly readings on Christmas Eve, I decided to buy this book and was not dissapointed,scared more likely.
    It has to be said that out of the 30 or stories that are included, I was left a trifle dissapointed with perhaps about ten, but overall the content of the other stories were chilling and disturbing.
    Reading these short tales whilst alone with just the sound of a ticking clock really takes you back to the time when most of the stories are told (1850's). Three stand out tales are 'Two Hearts,Whistle and I'll come to you and the atmospheric A Warning to the curious' are not for the faint hearted. In summary, I would decribe most of these stories as 'chilling classics from a bygone age' Enjoy
    29 people found this helpful
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  • Frostycat
    5.0 out of 5 stars Terrifying !!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 December 2005
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    In telling his stories, James evokes a bygone age of long rail journeys along forgotten branch lines, and remote, desolate landscapes. No blood and gore here, just supernatural terror, the things of which nightmares are made. 'Rats', 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad' and 'A Warning to the Curious' are masterpieces. You won't find anything more quintessentially English, or more disturbing than these tales. You'll never walk alone down that lonely stretch of road again! Genius.
    8 people found this helpful
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  • Lotus
    4.0 out of 5 stars book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 August 2023
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    some stories better than others.
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  • Beverley Mullaney
    1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 April 2020
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    The writing of the electronic version of this book has been poorly done. The wrong words have been used and the grammar is terrible. There's even reference to the website in one part which is strange for a book written before electricity. I returned the book as I was so disappointed!
    2 people found this helpful
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  • H. L. Radcliffe
    5.0 out of 5 stars No one can tell a ghost story like MR James - the master of the eerie
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 December 2014
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    No one can tell a ghost story like MR James - the master of the eerie, dark and supernatural. Nothing better than to curl up with on a dark night!
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Katy Walters
    5.0 out of 5 stars Really creepy.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 February 2018
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    So absorbing. Great to read an antiquarian book - really creepy.
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  • hood
    4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 August 2014
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    good
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Aman
    4.0 out of 5 stars Happy
    Reviewed in India on 3 September 2020
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    Good quality binding and printing. Happy with the seller. Good book.
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  • Dennis Hendrix
    5.0 out of 5 stars M R James - master of subtle horror...
    Reviewed in the United States on 29 March 2011
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    Buying this book used for $.01 + $3.99 shipping was perhaps the most fun I've ever squeezed out of four bucks. I took my time reading this book over several months, and James kept my interest in coming back for more. Horror in the writing of M R James is subtle, his prose is a bit academic and he makes you wait for that kernel of horror, but he's able to imply so much in so few words. In that way he's the opposite of H. P. Lovecraft (whom I love) in his use of adjectives about the "unutterable eldritch cyclopean explosions of tentacles."

    For example, in "Number 13" a man in a hotel suspects something bad is going on in room 13 next to his. One night looking out the window he sees his image projected onto the opposite wall, and further down, that of the occupant of 13 as well. All James has to say is that the occupant "must be possessed of a red lamp shade and the lamp must be flickering very much." We know exactly what's going on. His tales are filled with touches such as this, and they're often more subtle, giving you that fearful moment of realization.

    The settings in the stories of James are often "cozy" - remote villages, manor houses, desolate moors and perhaps his favorite of all; old cathedrals. His favorite evils are cloaked figures, demons and spiders. The idea of eternal evil forces that are shut up and unwittingly released appears over and over again; similar to Lovecraft's writing on "forbidden knowledge." This is also a bit like Arthur Machen's works that make folklore absolutely terrifying. Tension is built slowly with atmosphere, and when that hint of the horror is given it's unexpected.

    James didn't write one story that would be considered "epic" in the way that fellow English ghost story writer Algernon Blackwood did with "The Willows" or "The Windigo." Neither is he as intense as Machen or Lovecraft. However, the overall quality is better than Blackwood, who has a lot of "misses" in my opinion - if you like James' style, there's very few misses to be found here. Whereas Blackwood (and many other writers) often put you into the mind of the protagonist who senses something wrong, James just gives you the facts and makes YOU sense something is wrong.

    Some of the best stories here are "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," "The Ash Tree," "Number 13," "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" and "A View From a Hill" just to name a few. Some I would skip starting out are "Two Doctors" and "The Uncommon Prayer-Book."
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  • Amazon Customer
    1.0 out of 5 stars One Star
    Reviewed in India on 2 March 2017
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    Too boring
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  • Don Kidwell
    4.0 out of 5 stars It's all about...Atmosphere
    Reviewed in the United States on 31 July 2015
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    Collection of eight suspenseful ghost stories from a master that predates HP Lovecraft. Creepy fun with a dry British sense of wit that will have you wanting to pull up the covers and read a single tale just before you drop off to sleep so as to give you chills all week long. Very good book!
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  • Mia
    3.0 out of 5 stars Too slow and lacking excitement somehow
    Reviewed in the United States on 15 December 2016
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    Every so often it's good to dip into a classic. Alas, this was the sort of classic that reminded me why it's precisely every so often and not more frequently than that. Widely beloved, widely lauded these are suppose to be among the finest tales of supernatural fiction and yet they didn't do it for me at all. I tried and tried, took several sittings. The book's page count is misleading, it's entered as 94 on GR and 122 on Amazon and yet by my account considering the time spent reading it and the fact that it comprises parts 1 & 2 of James' stories, also published as separate volumes, this should clock out at well over 200 pages. And feels much slower than that. And the thing is objectively I can tell these are suppose to be good stories, quality writing, atmospheric, imaginative...and yet at no point did I find myself engaged or even particularly interested. In fact I think the main reason I finished these is due to my completist nature and general need to try to understand why I wasn't enjoying these stories the way everyone seems to. Were they dated? Sure, but that wasn't the main detraction. I expected them to be dated. Maybe it was the somnolent pacing. Or the fact that these stories were so utterly unexciting. Either way this really didn't work for me, neither entertained as a book should nor spooked as a genre book ought to. It occurred to me that these tales might be more fun if read aloud, maybe this should have been a listen and not a read. In book form...disappointing. But try I did.
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