FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What makes a story "in the M.R. James Tradition"?

Many people have applied their minds to this question, but never with complete success. Some hints can be found in M.R. James's introduction to the collection Ghosts & Marvels (1924). Here he was discussing ghost stories in general, but his 'rules' (not that he called them that) can be applied specifically to the Jamesian tale:

"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...

"For the ghost story a slight haze of distance is desirable. 'Thirty years ago,' 'Not long before the war', are very proper openings. If a really remote date be chosen, there is more than one way of bringing the reader in contact with it. The finding of documents about it can be made plausible; or you may begin with your apparition and go back over the years to tell the cause of it... On the whole (though not a few instances might be quoted against me) I think that a setting so modern that the ordinary reader can judge of its naturalness for himself is preferable to anything antique..."

Earlier, in the preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), MRJ put this more succinctly ("I think that, as a rule, the setting should be fairly familiar and the majority of the characters and their talk such as you may meet or hear any day"), before proceeding to make a further essential point:

"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."

A malevolent ghost in a familiar setting: thus it can be seen that an antiquarian background is not at all vital. MRJ's tales are frequently antiquarian but only because he was an antiquary, and writing about his own familiar lifestyle. Nevertheless, such a background of ancient churches, colleges and libraries is often part and parcel of another necessary facet of the Jamesian story: the uncovering of hidden things best left buried. These might be actual artefacts or occult secrets (even, perhaps, secrets of the mind), but whatever they are, tampering with them can result in disaster for the (often innocent) protagonist.

Add in a helping of humour and you have a Jamesian ghost story. Or not! All rules are meant to be broken and MRJ broke his own with some frequency.

I suppose a Jamesian story should have a Victorian setting?

See above! Some of MRJ's tales are set in Victorian times, because he was writing when that era was still current or a recent memory. Some, such as "A Warning to the Curious", are much more recent, while others go back as far as the seventeenth century ("Martin's Close"). When considering stories for Ghosts & Scholars I tend to look askance at those with a Victorian setting unless there is a good reason for it.

Is it possible for something to be Jamesian that predates M.R. James?

There is a tendency to lump all antiquarian ghost stories into the Jamesian category, as a result of which a number of pre-MRJ writers have been described as Jamesian. G&S doesn't subscribe to this view, but at the same time it would be foolish to claim that MRJ wasn't influenced by earlier authors, some of whom could quite reasonably be called pre-Jamesians. The most notable of these has to be Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, about whom MRJ once wrote: "Upon mature consideration, I do not think that there are better ghost stories anywhere than the best of Le Fanu's". MRJ's favourite was "The Familiar", but for me the best tale by Le Fanu is the marvellously Jamesian "Schalken the Painter".

Did M.R. James believe in ghosts?

It has often been maintained that MRJ definitely did not believe in ghosts, but there is no evidence for this degree of certainty. In an article in G&S 25 I collected together the references to real ghosts in MRJ's non-fiction writings and I think I was able to demonstrate that he had an open mind on the subject, but with a tendency towards belief (e.g. in 1931 he wrote: "...if there be ghosts - as I am quite prepared to believe..."). His last tale, "A Vignette", may just possibly be an attempt to get down on paper an authentic supernatural experience of his childhood.

Are M.R. James's ghost stories currently in print?

His Collected Ghost Stories is usually in print, sometimes in several editions. At the moment the best value is the one published by Wordsworth Classics (ISBN: 1-85326-839-9). The Collected Ghost Stories includes all but three of MRJ's completed tales. Those three ("A Vignette", "The Malice of Inanimate Objects" and "The Experiment") can be found together in print in M.R. James: Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox (Oxford World's Classics, 1987, ISBN: 0-19-281719-1). This volume also contains a selection of the best of MRJ's other tales with useful annotations, and a compendium of his non-fiction writings on the ghost story genre. The Five Jars, MRJ's delightful supernatural fantasy novel for children, was reprinted by Ash-Tree Press in 1995, but that's now out of print and starting to reach high prices on the second-hand market. The original fetches three figures! The continued lack of any mass-market paperback edition seems inexplicable.

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