Books

Attractively bound in the original finely woven black cloth with the front boards decorated with spiderweb design and lettering in light blue; with bright blue lettering on the spine. Rubbed at the top and bottom of the spine ends and at the corners. With a faint olive oil stain to the fore-edges which has seeped into a few margin edges on and near p. 138 not affecting any text. Very clean and tight throughout. A rather uncommon volume. Montague Rhodes James OM FBA (1862 1936) was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905 1918), and of Eton College (1918 1936). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913 1915). James's work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded,[1] but he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some consider among the best in the genre. He redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clich�s of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. Because his protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story".[2] James's ghost stories were published in a series of collections: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925). The first hardback collected edition appeared in 1931. Many of the tales were written as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to friends. This idea was used by the BBC in 2000 when they filmed Christopher Lee reading James's stories in a candle-lit room in King's College.James perfected a method of story-telling which has since become known as Jamesian. The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following elements: 1. 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 2. a nondescript and rather naive gentleman-scholar as protagonist (often of a reserved nature) 3. 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 graveAccording 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!'"[17] 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."[18]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." (Wikipedia) First edition with title page date of 1919 and no subsequent printings listed. Printed in Great Britain by Unwin Brothers Limited.