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These ghost stories are quiet, and that is what makes them scary. In one, a man buys a tiny doll's house, perfect in every detail, and at night the little family inside seems to act out something terrible. In another, a man digs into an old hill hunting a buried crown, and learns why nobody from the town ever goes there. The fear creeps in slowly, like cold air under a door.
James arranges the six stories in this collection as quiet escalations. Each begins in the most ordinary ground imaginable: a collector's purchase, an old prayer book, a walk over a landmark, a pair of field glasses borrowed for a view from a hill. Then one detail refuses to behave, and James tightens the screw a quarter turn at a time, withholding explanation until the story ends, often in mid breath, leaving the horror to finish itself in the reader's mind.
The theme is curiosity and its price. James's antiquaries, schoolmasters, and holiday makers are punished not for wickedness but for poking at things that were fenced off for a reason: the buried crown at Seaburgh still has its guardian, and the warning of the title is meant literally. The learned, comfortable world of his narrators turns out to be a crust, and history underneath it is neither dead nor kind.
The stories last because James perfected a form. Almost every English ghost story written since uses his recipe: documentary calm, a single wrong note, dread built from suggestion rather than spectacle. This collection, his last, shows the recipe at its most economical and most frightening.
M. R. James practically invented the modern English ghost story, and this 1925 collection shows his method at its quietest and most deadly. The Haunted Doll's House, written for the library of the Queen's Doll's House, follows a collector whose miniature house seems to act out a tragedy of its own. In the title story, a young man digs into the mound above Seaburgh hunting a legendary buried crown, and finds the place was never left unguarded.
A Warning to the Curious, published in 1925, was M. R. James's last collection, and it shows the master of the English ghost story working at his most economical. Six stories are gathered here, each one a demonstration of the method James perfected and every successor has borrowed: begin in the flattest documentary calm, introduce one detail that will not behave, and tighten the dread so gradually that the reader is trapped before noticing the door has closed. No other writer makes so little do so much.
The range within the method is the pleasure. The Haunted Doll's House, written for the library of the Queen's Doll's House, finds horror in a perfect miniature. A View from a Hill turns a borrowed pair of field glasses into an instrument of terror. The title story, set in the quiet coastal town of Seaburgh, sends a young man digging for a legendary buried crown and makes the book's warning literal: some things are guarded, and the guard has not stood down. Expect no gore and no explanations, only antiquaries, schoolmasters, and holiday makers learning the price of curiosity, and stories that continue to work on you after the light is out.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 66881.
The first chapter
A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS
Title: A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost Stories
Author: M. R. James
Release date: December 4, 2021 [eBook #66881]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66881
Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)
A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS
A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS
By Dr M. R. JAMES
PROVOST OF ETON
GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY
5s. net.
MORE GHOST STORIES
5s. net.
A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS
4s. 6d. net.
THE FIVE JARS
With Illustrations. 6s. net.
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS
A WARNING TO
THE CURIOUS
and other Ghost Stories
BY
MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES
Author of “Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,” etc.
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1925
[All rights reserved]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1925. Author died 1936. Public domain in the US. Share this book: WhatsApp
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