For the Dead Remember
The Life of M. R. James
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:10th Sep '26
Should be back in stock very soon
M. R. James: greatest of all ghost story writers, a repressed member of the English establishment struggling against changing times Every 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 séance', 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.
Deeply researched, always engaging, occasionally contentious - Darryl Jones's life of M R James is the fullest, frankest account yet written of this curious, reticent, funny man, and the worlds that he inhabited and imagined. A fine companion to the peerless ghost stories. * Robert Lloyd Parry, editor of Friends and Spectres *
For the Dead Remember is an achievement of scholarship and storytelling worth celebrating. Not only does it bring to life one of the greatest supernatural writers of all time, a man shielded from both others and himself, but also the lost world through which he moved, and does so in a manner that is witty, generous, and ultimately moving. As an evocation of M. R. James and his circle, and a reminder of the dark glory of his tales, it is unlikely ever to be bettered. * John Connolly, author of A River Red With Blood *
Comprehensive, erudite and insightful; this is the definitive biography of M.R. James. * Andrew Smith, author of The Ghost Story 1840-1920 *
An original and vivid account of the Victorian academic gentleman's world, with male friendship, rigid adherence to tradition, and devout institutionalism at its core. Jones's storytelling is so compelling that the book is hard to set down, even as its deep research enables the spirit of the age to shine through the lives of James and his contemporaries. * Victoria Rosner, author of Machines for Living *
Jones has done a huge amount of work on this biography, which tells you everything you could possibly want to know about James ... By seeking to situate James within his own time and place, Darryl Jones provides a real insight into how we might understand him * William Whyte, Literary Review *
Exhaustively researched ... It is hard to imagine anyone producing a more thorough, well-documented and sympathetic biography than this one * Eamon Duffy, The Tablet *
This book is to be read for its sweep through this incredibly turbulent, often strikingly sad at a personal level, period of British history * Richard Lofthouse, QUAD magazine *
For historians and ghost-story enthusiasts alike; for scholars and those amongst us intrigued by the complexities of the human condition, For The Dead Remember is an achievement of biography that invites the reader into the curious, tender, and powerful inner world of M R James * Unseen Histories *
It's difficult to imagine a better account of James's life ever being written * John Connolly, Irish Times *
An excellent new biography by Darryl Jones...a very good book about a very interesting man * Alexander Poots, UnHerd *
a book beyond reproach in its level of detail and attention to primary sources. It has been a long time coming, and eagerly awaited by many, and in this year of the 90th anniversary of James's death, it does justice to the man and does not disappoint. ... an addictive and compelling read * Francis Young, Historian and Folklorist *
the definitive biography of the man who gifted us such pleasing terrors ... [this] meticulous study uncovers more details about the influences and origins of MRJ's ghost stories than any previous work, making it indispensable to any lover of the genre ... absolutely not to be missed * Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue *
ISBN: 9780198835233
Dimensions: 240mm x 162mm x 40mm
Weight: 754g
464 pages