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The Best Fiction Books » Horror

Collected Ghost Stories by MR James
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Collected Ghost Stories

by MR James

Recommendations from our site

” I can barely read these stories myself. It’s the only literature that gives me nightmares. This collection was read to me by a teacher at school when I was eight years old, on dark autumnal Friday afternoons. I re-read them as an undergraduate, and was absolutely terrified once again.” Read more...

The best books on The Gothic

Nick Groom, Literary Scholar

“James, I think, is the most frightening writer I have ever encountered. It is all in the set-up. It is all in his ability to create an extraordinary, unsettling atmosphere. James was a Cambridge don, and a manuscript scholar of enormous distinction. You have to understand his ghost stories as a by-product of his formal scholarly research.” Read more...

The Best Horror Stories

Darryl Jones, Literary Scholar

“M R James is arguably the greatest master of the English ghost story. His stories are considerably grimmer and grislier than ghost stories had been up until then. He wrote these stories initially to be read to friends at Christmas. They were only published later—he wrote them down for the telling. That style of candlelit scary storytelling is called Jamesian after him. And the other thing worth saying about James is that his ambition was to be as frightening as possible. He certainly succeeds.” Read more...

The best books on Horror Stories

Ramsey Campbell, Novelist

Our most recommended books

  • Collected Ghost Stories
    by MR James

  • The Haunting of Hill House
    by Shirley Jackson

  • Frankenstein

    Frankenstein (Book)
    by Mary Shelley

  • Dracula
    by Bram Stoker

  • I Am Legend
    by Richard Matheson

  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle
    by Shirley Jackson

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