
For the Dead Remember The Life of M. R. James
The Life of M. R. James
Jones(Author)
Oxford University Press
Will be published approx. on 10. September 2026
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-19-883523-3 (ISBN)
Description
M. R. James: greatest of all ghost story writers, a repressed member of the English establishment struggling against changing timesEvery Christmas around the turn of the twentieth century, Montague Rhodes James would gather his friends and students together in his rooms at King's College Cambridge, for what he once described as a 'dark seance', in which he read a new ghost story by candlelight at midnight. But the ghost
stories are only one aspect of the life and writing of this fascinating, complex, troubled, difficult man. Monty James was widely recognized as perhaps the outstanding scholar of his generation, a man whose academic
achievements were unparalleled, and who became the foremost living authority on medieval manuscripts, on stained glass, on Biblical apocrypha, and on the occult. He was also a formidable academic administrator, as Provost of King's College Cambridge and then as Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, he led his institution through the difficult years of the First World War, in which many of his colleagues and students were killed. After the war, he returned to the sanctuary of his beloved
Eton, which he served as Provost until his death.James's life in Cambridge brought him into contact, and often into conflict, with many of the great figures and movements of his age,
from Henry Sidgwick and the Society for Psychical Research to John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and the Bloomsbury Group, with which he had many connections. He was the friend of A. C. Benson, the teacher of Rupert Brooke. He was a repressed gay man, whose friends recognized this even where he did not. He was often troubled by modern ideas and tendencies, widening social access to universities, degrees for women. This is also a story of the profound consolations of scholarship, and of a man
who found meaning on the wilder shores of human experience, in a world of demons and ghosts.
stories are only one aspect of the life and writing of this fascinating, complex, troubled, difficult man. Monty James was widely recognized as perhaps the outstanding scholar of his generation, a man whose academic
achievements were unparalleled, and who became the foremost living authority on medieval manuscripts, on stained glass, on Biblical apocrypha, and on the occult. He was also a formidable academic administrator, as Provost of King's College Cambridge and then as Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, he led his institution through the difficult years of the First World War, in which many of his colleagues and students were killed. After the war, he returned to the sanctuary of his beloved
Eton, which he served as Provost until his death.James's life in Cambridge brought him into contact, and often into conflict, with many of the great figures and movements of his age,
from Henry Sidgwick and the Society for Psychical Research to John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and the Bloomsbury Group, with which he had many connections. He was the friend of A. C. Benson, the teacher of Rupert Brooke. He was a repressed gay man, whose friends recognized this even where he did not. He was often troubled by modern ideas and tendencies, widening social access to universities, degrees for women. This is also a story of the profound consolations of scholarship, and of a man
who found meaning on the wilder shores of human experience, in a world of demons and ghosts.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Illustrations
10 black and white images
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 40 mm
Weight
754 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-883523-3 (9780198835233)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Darryl Jones is Professor of Modern British Literature and Culture at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author or editor of fourteen books and numerous articles, mostly on nineteenth-century literature and popular literature. In 2011, he edited the Oxford World's Classics edition of M. R. James's Collected Ghost Stories. He is the General Editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, for which series he edited The Hound of the
Baskervilles.
Baskervilles.
Content
Abbreviations
Cast of Characters
Preface
Acknowledgements
1: Port Royal, Jamaica, 1655
2: Temple Grove, 1873
3: Eton, 1876
4: King's, 1882
5: Fellow of King's, 1887
6: Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, 1893
7: Provost of King's, 1905
8: Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1913
9: Provost of Eton, 1918
10: Order of Merit, 1930
11: Nunc dimittis, Provost's Lodge, Eton, 12 June 1936
Cast of Characters
Preface
Acknowledgements
1: Port Royal, Jamaica, 1655
2: Temple Grove, 1873
3: Eton, 1876
4: King's, 1882
5: Fellow of King's, 1887
6: Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, 1893
7: Provost of King's, 1905
8: Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1913
9: Provost of Eton, 1918
10: Order of Merit, 1930
11: Nunc dimittis, Provost's Lodge, Eton, 12 June 1936