Helen Grant is a lifelong fan of the ghost stories of Montague Rhodes James; one of her novels, The Glass Demon, was partly inspired by "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas," with its mysterious stained glass windows. She has also written a series of non-fiction articles about the work of M.R.James, and these are now collected in this eBook.
As she relates in the first of these articles, a move abroad found her living within a short distance of the setting of one of MRJ's tales. She could not resist visiting it, and having visited it, she wrote a piece comparing the fictional and real-life location. She went on to visit other foreign settings of MRJ's stories, and to examine other aspects of their backgrounds, including local folklore. The result is a series of eight articles spanning the period 2004 – 2008, with some later updates. All these articles originally appeared in the M.R.James Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter. This eBook was produced with the aim of collecting the articles in one place for the benefit of anyone with a scholarly interest in the stories of M.R.James.
The book is non-fiction but contains a fiction extra, "The Game of Bear."
Helen "My completion of MRJ's unfinished story "The Game of Bear" has already appeared in the M.R.James Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter and in my collection The Sea Change & Other Stories, published in 2013 by Swan River Press. However, I am regularly asked by readers where they can find it, so I thought I would make it available again here. I also feel that as it is a 'collaboration' with the great MRJ himself, it belongs with my examinations of his work."
