Montague Rhodes James, ca. ATD time.

[Glenn Scheper]

Our beloved bookish hamster would have mulled over M. R. James:

Montague Rhodes James, OM (August 1, 1862 - June 12, 1936), who published under 
the byline M. R. James, was a noted British | mediaeval scholar and provost of 
King's College, Cambridge (1905-1918) and of Eton College (1918-1936). He is 
best remembered today for his ghost stories in the classic Victorian Yuletide 
vein, which are widely regarded as among the finest in English literature.

key elements...
the discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow calls down 
the wrath, or at least the unwelcome attention, of a supernatural menace, 
usually from beyond the grave

He also perfected the literary technique of the genre: narrating supernatural 
events principally through implication and suggestion, letting his reader fill 
in the blanks, and focusing on the mundane details of his settings and 
characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater 
relief.

H. P. Lovecraft was an admirer of James's work, extolling the stories as the 
peak of the ghost story form
  -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James
  M. R. James - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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