Montague Rhodes James
1862 to 1936
Montague Rhodes James was the son of a Church of England curate, born in 1862.
He
grew up already fascinated by the world of arcane medieval manuscripts and
mysterious antiquities from which many of his best-known stories derive.
His
protagonists are creaky college professors and dusty academics, solitary
figures drawn no doubt from his years as Provost and later Vice Chancellor of
Kings' College, Cambridge.
He
was best known in scholarly circles for his translation of the New Testament
Apocrypha. But it's for his ghosts and apparitions that he's chiefly
remembered. The Collected Stories, published by Arnold in 1932 remains in print
to this day.
James's ghosts are never shocking in a 'horror-movie' way and
are never written about in any detail. There's very rarely even any blood but
he plays most skilfully on the unconscious anxieties we all share - most
particularly, of course, our fear of death itself. Return to The
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