Ghost Stories

Vintage Classics

By: Ruth Rendell (Introduction by), M. R. James

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Paperback | 1 November 2011 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
288 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.7 x 13.1 x 1.9

Paperback

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Malignant forces and supernatural visitors haunt this selection of superbly spooky tales.

M. R. James wrote his ghost stories to entertain friends on Christmas Eve, and they went on to both transform and modernise a genre. James harnesses the power of suggestion to move from a recognisable world to one that is indefinably strange, and then unforgettably terrifying. Sheets, pictures, carvings, a dolls house, a lonely beach, a branch tapping on a window - ordinary things take on more than a tinge of dread in the hands of the original master of suspense.

About The Author

M. R. James (1862–1936) was a renowed medievalist and biblical scholar, and published works on palaeography, antiquarianism, bibliography, and history as well as editing a collection of ghost stories by Sheridan Le Fanu. He remains best known for his own ghost stories, which were published in several collections including Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, A Thin Ghost and Other Stories, and A Warning to the Curious. Ruth Rendell is an award-winning crime writer whose titles include End in Tears, Harm Done, and The Monster in the Box.

Industry Reviews

In M.R. James' stories, the ordinary tips over into an alternative existence that is just as believable * Guardian *
An original and powerful storyteller.... A gnawing sense of unease, a steady accumulation of sounds, shadows and images finally meet in a single moment of sensational physical horror * Daily Telegraph *
M R James, who ushered the ghost story into our century, is still quite simply the craftiest * Independent *
M R James is quite simply the finest writer of ghost stories ever. They're always set in an academic context, about university chaps who find out very nasty things while they're researching. They uncork the wrong bottle, unearth the wrong papers, dig up the wrong place. . . James was provost of Eton and a fellow of Kings College, and the stories have this wonderful candlelit, academic atmosphere, surrounded by incredible nastiness. Tweedy, but unpleasant -- Christopher Frayling
A master class in creepiness from the Edwardian-era Provost of King's College, Cambridge. James delivers brilliant atmospherics, gnawing disquiet and (above all) horrific denouements created by suggestion rather than ghoulish spectacle * Independent *

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