Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Product Information

Lost Hearts' – A rather moving tale of revenge from beyond the grave and the perils of devoting oneself to the arcane teachings of the ancients in the hopes of gaining eternal life. With a contemporary ink inscription to the front free endpaper, dated December 25th 1911, and a Blackwell's bookseller's label to the front pastedown.

James McBryde had originally intended to supply more illustrations for the work, but unfortunately died prematurely before he could complete them. His discovery of a manuscript fragment led to excavations in the ruins of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, in 1902, in which the graves of several twelfth-century abbots were rediscovered, having been lost since the Dissolution. Titles and decoration on both the spine and cover remain bright, but cloth shows moderate discoloration and small rubbed areas.i-vi] vii-ix [x] xi [xii] 1 [2] 3-270 [271-272: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original tan buckram, front and spine panels stamped in orange and black, rear panel stamped in orange, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. The situation is usually quite prosaic to start with, and the author moves very slowly piling on his tension step by step.

Containing seven short horror stories titled 'A School Story,' 'The Rose Garden,' 'The Tractate Middoth,' 'Casting the Runes,' 'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral,' 'Martin's Close,' and 'Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance. The final part of this collection is 'The Ash Tree' which stands as one of my favourite James tales and is done full justice here with its scratchy, gothic lines and gruesome imagery.James McBryde was one of those friends and offered to illustrate the volume, but sadly died after only 4 illustrations were completed. Original edition was published in and this unique edition is Reprinted in 2008 with the help of original edition. This edition reprints for the first time in recent years the four original illustrations that James McBride prepared while James was working on this, his first collection. He wrote many of his ghost stories to be read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. The light is admirably managed, it seems to me, and the figure, though it’s rather too grotesque, is somehow very impressive.

Pages a little browned with light spotting to the first and last pages and a little creasing at the top right corner of the first few pages but otherwise the pages are clean and unmarked. A Cambridge scholar himself, James explored what happens when academics dabble in things they don’t understand and unleash forces of which they know nothing.

Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' has a very 1970s EC comic book feel followed (as in the original source material) by 'Lost Hearts' which has an altogether more modern Tim Burton/anime-style which works beautifully.

His narrators are academic, but acquired knowledge proves to be no protection against the inexplicable or the unknown. I think the reader can easily tell how much love and care James put in the writing of these stories. In the twentieth-century literature of the supernatural, the single most important book, in the opinion of most scholars and enthusiasts, is Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by Montague Rhodes James. The second short story collection by Montague Rhodes James, following Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. They have as a background the quaint archaic world of academe or the church, seemingly safe and secluded from the outside world.Among them are such favorites as "Number Thirteen," "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book," and "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad. An Original Leather is being used for binding this book with Golden Leaf Printing and designing on Spine, front and Back of the book with edge gilding. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, James created tales of understated horror that continue to transfix readers 80 years after his death.