M.R.James Links

Illustration:
"Oh, Whistle, and I'll come to you, My Lad"
by James McBryde .
OTHER M.R.JAMES STORIES ON THE WEB

The following stories, not featured here, can be found on the excellent Literary Gothic site.
The Rose Garden
The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
The Tractate Middoth
Martin's Close
Mr Humphries and his Inheritance
A Warning to the Curious
In addition, the ever-dependable Gaslight discussion group have uploaded:
An Episode of Cathedral History

INTERNET AND SMALL PRESS LINKS

Ghosts and Scholars was until recently THE source magazine for anything Jamesian, whether in fact or fiction.Unfortunately, it is no more, but its founder, Rosemary Pardoe, has continued the good work online. Always worth a visit, and of course back issues of the magazine can frequently be found on www.abebooks.

All Hallows is the journal of the Ghost Story Society, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden. It takes a broad view of the ghost story field, and publishes original fiction in the genre.
For more information on M.R.James and other fantasy writers, a good starting point is the Classic Horror and Fantasy Page, which features links to a variety of online texts.

If you'd like to discuss this kind of literature on usenet, you'll want to visit alt.books.ghost-fiction, or at the very least read their informative FAQ.

THE TREASURE OF KLOSTER STEINFELD

In 1904 M.R.James was carrying out an inventory of the stained glass in the chapel of Ashridge Park, the property of Lord Brownlow. Noticing references to "Abbas Steinfedensis" on many of the panes, he formed the conjecture (incorrect, as it turned out) that all of the glass originated at Steinfeld, in the Eiffel District of Germany. In addition, he was inspired to write The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (included on this site).

In 1907, the story came to the attention of a monk at Steinfeld. This led to to a correspondence with James, and the eventual location of most of the long-missing stained glass (the Ashridge specimens are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum).Kloster Steinfeld now has its own site, where you can see the wonderful stained glass windows which inspired MRJ and (if you have a German dictionary handy) read the story of their rediscovery.

GETTING HOLD OF GHOST STORIES

If you enjoyed these stories then you’ll probably want to know where you can find more. The stories of M.R.James are constantly in print, so you shouldn’t have problems finding your own copy. But other writers specialising in the same type of story are harder to locate. Many are out of print, though a number of reprints do appear at intervals.

The Ash-Tree Press (associated with the Ghost Story Society) produces an excellent range of such reprints.They are responsible for producing the definitive collection of James' work, which they have titled "A Pleasing Terror'. See their site for more details.

Invisible Ink is another fascinating site - it is, as far as I know, the world’s only bookshop dealing exclusively with ghosts. Most of its stock is non-fiction(allegedly!), but it does carry fiction too, especially that of the ‘old masters’.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Violet Books deals in antiquarian supernatural literature, and her site features interesting essays on writers such as Marjorie Bowen, Vincent O'Sullivan and Marie Corelli.

Bistordery Books publishes an excellent catalogue at regular intervals.

Midnight House is another source of excellent reprints.

Zardoz Books has a massive stock of second hand paperbacks, among them many anthologies of otherwise unavailable ghost and horror stories at very low prices.

The best place to find the titles you want is in a second hand bookshop - and ABEBOOKS.COM is the biggest one on earth. It ‘s an enormous on-line store where you can browse until your head spins! Happy hunting!