Whenever fictional ghost stories are written or spoken about, one author is sure to be invoked: M. R. James, Provost successively of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton, and the author of four outstanding collections of ghost stories published between 1904 and 1925. This anthology is the first to illustrate the extent of James's influence on the English tradition of ghost fiction. Following James's lead, the writers represented here conjure up an ordered, placid world into which the supernatural - usually in malevolent form - slowly but surely intrudes itself, a world of country houses, forlorn churches, quiet college quadrangles and damp cathedral crypts, a world in which ancient objects, books, manuscripts and inscriptions provide potent links between the present and a vengeful past.
Richard Dalby and Rosemary Pardoe's selection of 25 of the very best Jamesian stories include several rarities such as "The Stone Coffin" by the anonymous 'B' and Frederick Cowles's "The Strange Affair at Upton Stonewold" - as well as tales by Archur Gray, R.H. Malden, L. T. C. Rolt, Dermot Chesson Spence, E. G. Swain, Montague Summers, Ramsey Campbell, and David Rowlands. In addition, there is a little-known essay on ghost stories by James himself and a Preface by James's biographer, Michael Cox.