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M. R. James I have a long-standing interest in the life and fiction of Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), scholar and writer of some of the most celebrated ghost stories in the English language. My research focuses on the ghost stories, and seeks to place them in the context both of James’s own life, character and scholarship, and to relate them to their cultural and historical background. Thus far, this research has borne fruit in three essays which you can read on this site; links are given below, and are also listed, with my other work, in the research section of this site. You will also find some useful Jamesian links on this page, which I will keep updated as my work in this area progresses. Scholarly essays on M. R. James ‘“So jarred were all my nerves”: supernatural shock and traumatic terror in the ghost stories of M. R. James’ (2006) Read>> ‘M. R. James: supernaturalism, Christianity and moral accountability’ (2006) Read>> ‘Ghosts, trains and trams: the technologies of transport in the ghost stories of M. R. James’ (2005) Read>> New publication ‘Storyteller haunted by a Christian conscience’, The Tablet, 30 December 2006, pp. 15-16. This article is only available to Tablet subscribers, in print or via the Tablet website. Some M. R. James web resources Ghosts & Scholars – the premier internet resource for all matters Jamesian and home of the Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter. This site also provides the most comprehensive collection of links to Jamesian web resources. The texts of many of M. R. James’s ghost stories can be found at Gaslight’s M. R. James page, the M. R. James Homepage, and the M. R. James page at Literary Gothic. A Thin Ghost is a very interesting site all about M. R. James's ghost stories, including some striking artwork. Consider the Evidence has some interesting things to say about M. R. James and others. Another scholar with an ongoing interest in M. R. James is Robert A. Kraft of the University of Pennsylvania, and his ‘Rescuing Ghosts from the Shadows: Montague Rhodes James and his Curiously Converging Imaginations’ is a fascinating read. Finally, for anyone interested in supernatural fiction, including ghost stories in the best Jamesian tradition, the publications of the Ghost Story Society are recommended. The above represents a only very small sample of the internet sites devoted to, or containing material relevant to, the study of M. R. James. For a much fuller and more detailed guide to Jamesian web resources, you are recommended to consult the excellent links section at Ghosts & Scholars. Illustration: King’s College, Cambridge, view of the chapel. M. R. James’s association with King’s, where he was successively a student, fellow, and Provost, lasted from 1882 to 1918. [Public domain image: source.] © greycat.org