M. R. James: 'A Warning to the Curious' and 'Casting the Runes'

Written by M.R. James

Narrated by Geoff McGivern

Montague Rhodes James, the greatest English writer of ghost stories, was born in 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate, and spent most of his boyhood at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia, where his father had become Rector. From childhood he was passionately interested in mediaeval books and antiques. At the age of six, attending his first children’s party, he burst into tears, but was soon comforted by being taken into the library of the house and left there alone. He won a scholarship to Eton and took a double first at Cambridge, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist. In the years up to 1914 he enjoyed spending his vacations cycling round Europe, the first of his many visits being made with a friend sharing a double tricycle. In 1913 he became Vice-Chancellor of the University, and in 1918 he became Provost of Eton. A man of formidable learning and enormous quickness of mind, he translated the Apocryphal Books of the New Testament into English, having them published in 1924, and was said to time his breakfast egg by the time it took him to complete the Times crossword. Many of his elegant and terrifying tales were suggested to him by scenes he had visited in Europe or England. Seaburgh, for instance, in ‘A Warning to the Curious’, is Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Story-telling was a hobby, and his great reputation is based on only thirty or so stories, written over about the same number of years, from 1894 to 1927. His first collection, ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’, was published in 1904. He died in 1936. This volume contains A Warning To The Curious and Casting The Runes. Geoff McGivern has been heard in many BBC Radio programmes, including Mid-Week, Week Ending and the role of Ford Prefect in the original radio and cassette version of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. He has appeared extensively on stage including the West End run of The Dresser. On television he has appeared in Mr Pye, Blackadder III and Chelmsford 123.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780001005

M.R. James

Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage, Kent, where his father was a curate, but the family moved soon afterwards to Great Livermere in Suffolk. James attended Eton College and later King's College Cambridge where he won many awards and scholarships. From 1894 to 1908 he was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and from 1905 to 1918 was Provost of King's College. In 1913, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University for two years. In 1918 he was installed as Provost of Eton. A distinguished medievalist and scholar of international status, James published many works on biblical and historical antiquarian subjects. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930. His ghost story writing began almost as a divertissement from his academic work and as a form of entertainment for his colleagues. His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was published in 1904. He never married and died in 1936.

Reviews for M. R. James

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

James, in this last volume of ghost stories, had thought of new antiquities to haunt, but he had lost much of what had made him fresh and influential, his wit and his ability to surprise. "A haunted dolls' house" was, as he admitted, a revision of an earlier, arguably better, story. "The uncommon prayer-book" and "A view from a hill" began well but ended lazily. "A neighbor's landmark" was the best story from beginning to end, a nasty idea with a suitably vague explanation. "A warning to the curious" was boring and familiar until the brilliant ending in a seaside mist. "An evening's entertainment" was an agreeable fireside story, with grisly details and the rather amount of mystery about what the two bad men were up to.

[arkrayder · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked how M. R. James left the entity in the story to the reader’s imagination.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It became plain to me after a few minutes that this visitor of ours was in rather a state of fidgets or nerves, which communicated itself to me, and so I put away my writing and turned to at engaging him in talk.After some remarks, which I forget, he became rather confidential. 'You'll think it very odd of me' (this was the sort of way he began), 'but the fact is I've had something of a shock.' Well, I recommended a drink of some cheering kind, and we had it. The waiter coming in made an interruption (and I thought our young man seemed very jumpy when the door opened), but after a while he got back to his woes again. There was nobody he knew in the place, and he did happen to know who we both were (it turned out there was some common acquaintance in town), and really he did want a word of advice, if we didn't mind. Of course we both said: 'By all means,' or 'Not at all,' and Long put away his cards. And we settled down to hear what his difficulty was.The title of "A Warning to the Curious" could apply to many of M. R. James' stories, and it is quite a similar story to "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad", with the protagonist stirring up trouble for himself by digging up an artifact and then trying to put things right be returning it to its resting place, although Paxton is searching for the object he digs up, rather than coming across it accidentally. One thing I really like about both stories is how the older men the protagonists ask for advice are so willing to help a young man in trouble, however unlikely the tale he tells.The Haunted Dolls' House was one of the stories by famous authors that were written for Queen Mary's Dolls House, bound into tiny books and placed in bookcases in the dolls' house library and M. R. James comments at the end of the story that he is worried that it is too similar to his earlier story "The Mezzotint" so it must have worried him, but I don't think it is similar enough to be a problem. Hills feature prominently in several of these stories (whether haunted by something that screams, a viewpoint from which to view the countryside, the burial place of an ancient treasure or the site of a giant chalk figure cut into the turf).