Whispering Runes

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Lore & Background

James originally read the stories to friends and select students at Eton and Cambridge as Christmas Eve entertainments, and received wider attention when they were published in the 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), and the hardback omnibus The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James (1931). James published a further three stories before his death in 1936, and seven previously unpublished or unfinished stories appeared in The Fenstanton Witch and Others: M. R. James in Ghosts and Scholars (1999). James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors, and is noted for his use of realism and dry humour to ground the stories and contrast with the supernatural elements. He is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story" and "the Father of Folk Horror" for the way his plots and characters drew on his own scholarly interests in ancient folklore and the rural landscapes of East Anglia. This association has continued into the 21st century due to the many adaptations of his stories, which have made him, according to critic Jon Dear, "the go-to folk horror writer".

In Their Own Story

James was born in a clergy house in Goodnestone, Dover, Kent, England, although his parents had associations with Aldeburgh in Suffolk. His father was Herbert James, an Evangelical Anglican clergyman, and his mother, Mary Emily (née Horton), was the daughter of a naval officer. He had two older brothers, Sydney and Herbert (nicknamed "Ber"), and an older sister, Grace. A cousin was Margaret Helen James. Sydney James later became Archdeacon of Dudley. From the age of three (1865) until 1909 James's home, if not always his residence, was at the Rectory in Great Livermere, Suffolk. This had previously been the childhood home of another eminent Suffolk antiquary, Thomas Martin of Palgrave (1696–1771). Several of James's ghost stories are set in Suffolk, including "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" (Felixstowe), "A Warning to the Curious" (Aldeburgh), "Rats" and "A Vignette" (Great Livermere). In September 1873, he arrived as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London. From September 1876 to August 1882, he studied at Eton College, where he claimed to have translated the Book of Baruch from its original Ethiopic in 1879. He lived for many years, first as an undergraduate (1882–1885), then as a don and provost, at King's College, Cambridge, where he was also a member of the Pitt Club. The university provides settings for several of his tales. Apart from medieval subjects, James toured Europe often, including a memorable 1884 tour of France in a Cheylesmore tricycle, studied the classics and appeared very successfully in a staging of Aristophanes' play The Birds, with music by Hubert Parry. His ability as an actor was also apparent when he read his new ghost stories to friends at Christmas time.

Reader's Guide

James perfected a method of story-telling which has since become known as Jamesian. The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following elements: a characterful setting in an English village, seaside town or country estate; an ancient town in France, Denmark or Sweden; or a venerable abbey or university; a nondescript and rather naive gentleman-scholar as protagonist (often of a reserved nature); the discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow unlocks, calls down the wrath, or at least attracts the unwelcome attention of a supernatural menace, usually from beyond the grave. According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'" He also perfected the technique of narrating supernatural events through implication and suggestion, letting his reader fill in the blanks, and focusing on the mundane details of his settings and characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater relief. He summed up his approach in his foreword to the anthology Ghosts and Marvels: "Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo. ... Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage." He also noted: "Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story." Despite his suggestion (in the essay "Stories I Have Tried to Write") that writers employ reticence in their work, many of James's tales depict scenes and images of savage and often disturbing violence. For example, in "Lost Hearts", pubescent children are taken in by a sinister dabbler in the occult who cuts their hearts from their still-living bodies. In a 1929 essay, James stated: "Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view, I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it, and there is much blatancy in a lot of recent stories. They drag in sex too, which is a fatal mistake; sex is tiresome enough in the novels; in a ghost story, or as the backbone of a ghost story, I have no patience with it. At the same time don't let us be mild and drab. Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, 'the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded; the weltering and wallowing that I too often encounter merely recall the methods of M G Lewis."

Did You Know?

• James served as vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1913 to 1915.
• He translated the Book of Enoch from Ethiopic, publishing the translation in 1893 after beginning work on it while a student at Cambridge.
• A manuscript fragment discovered by others led to excavations at Bury St Edmunds abbey in 1902, which rediscovered graves of twelfth-century abbots lost since the dissolution of the monasteries; James helped identify the
• He was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1930.
• James toured France in 1884 on a Cheylesmore tricycle.