Montague Rhodes James

A first edition of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by Montague Rhodes James.

• Montague Rhodes James (British).
• London: Edward Arnold, 1904.
• Octavo.
• 270 pages.
• With four illustrations by James McBryde.
• Original beige linen, stamped in black and red, yapp fore-edges.

The first work of fiction by the distinguished scholar, educator, administrator and antiquarian who was one of the greatest ghost-story writers of all time. Had he not written in the genre, James, born in 1862, would have been remembered as a writer and expert on apocryphal literature and medieval manuscripts, as director of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, a noteworthy administrator of King's College, and Provost of Eton until his death in 1936. Instead, we know him as a masterful narrator who “surpassed most writers of ghost stories in the eeriness of his atmosphere, the individual and peculiarly creepy quality of his plots, and the vindictiveness and maligancy of his ghosts …” (Kunitz & Haycraft, Twentieth Century Authors). Among the eight extremely creepy stories in this volume is the frequently anthologized tale, "The Mezzotint". The illustrator of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, James McBryde, was a younger friend of the author who died suddenly in 1904 having completed only four drawings; James declined to have other illustrations commissioned during his lifetime.