Or, James would sometimes change things up and make the found object a picture, a piece of stained glass, or something else with a secret message to disclose. He often used the ‘found manuscript’ conceit, and even doubled it a time or two. Some of James’ favorite literary techniques came from Gothic literature. …A boy who could, out of the pound given him as his half’s pocket-money, spend on his way back to Eton sixteen shillings for the four volumes of John Albert Fabricius on the Apocrypha was obviously not as other boys.Ĭount Magnus and Other Ghost Stories, Penguin Classics …when recovering from a bad attack of bronchitis, he expressed a longing to see a certain seventeenth-century Dutch Bible which he had heard was in the possession of his father’s friend… A friend’s reminiscences* include examples of what I would call pretty unusual behavior for a little boy: He also appears to have been a keen antiquarian from childhood. James was the son of a clergyman, and his stories depict a society in which the unassailable centrality of the Anglican church is assumed (rather like Trollope). Being an antiquarian ( enthusiastic does not begin to describe it), he enjoyed featuring ancient manuscripts, artifacts, or monsters, and his protagonists are often scholarly gentlemen, like himself. He knew much of the Gothic tradition, and both drew upon it and departed from it, bringing new ideas to the scene I think we can fairly call him a bridge from Gothic literature to the beginnings of modern horror. Montague Rhodes James (1862 – 1936) spent his life as a scholar and medievalist, working at Cambridge and Eton, and he also wrote ghost stories on the side, for fun.

I Like Being Alone by Betty Ren Wright