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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 12, 2022 13:51:21 GMT
My final review (THE RESIDENCE AT WHITMINSTER) of M.R. James for a while is linked below… This is a story that seems to convey a genuine sense of evil more than any of the others I have recently re-read! If anyone would care to see the MRJ stories that I have recently treated in this manner (all are linked by a single link at the end of each review including the one below), could you please tell me, if I ever only reviewed one more MRJ story, which should it be? dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/08/12/the-residence-at-whitminster-by-m-r-james/
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 30, 2022 8:22:44 GMT
THE ROSE GARDEN “…the hold ones was the worst:” This disarming M.R. James work seems in mutual synergy with R.H. Malden’s ‘The Sundial’ — the latter’s ‘If you’ll pull, I’ll push’ versus the former’s “Pull, pull. I’ll push, you pull.” A married couple in my county of Essex (aptly near the town of Maldon!) — Mr Anstruther (“Mr. Anstruther’s face, which had shown symptoms of lengthening, shortened itself again”) and Mrs Anstruther, and she, a bit officious as some Essex ladies still are, demands that a certain section of land within the community estate for which they have power over should be cleared of objects such as a firmly fixed post, to allow for a rose garden. He goes off to golf, and she to her drawing en plein air, while ordering their old local gardener to do all the work, also much against his sense of disquiet at what was requested! (I say old as he acted ‘hold’.) To cut a relatively short story a bit shorter, there is much accruing of the dreams dreamt by various people (“I should really like to know how I came to put my dream together—as I suppose one does put one’s dreams together from a lot of little things…”), including the stories told by a lady visitor to Mrs A, stories about when she and her brother were children with dreams in the head when living here — all this being triangulated toward a gestalt of some historical trial and the subsequent burial under that post of something that did not want to be buried. And other additions such as Roothings, the initials A.C., and owls being not what they seem. “…and hearing a sound of a lot of people. I really don’t think I could bear now to go into a crowd of people and hear the noise they make talking.”
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Post by andydecker on Jan 16, 2024 14:23:10 GMT
The Complete Works of M. R. James (Delphi, 2013, digital edition)
Contents: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) More Ghost Stories (1911) A Thin Ghost and Others (1919) A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925) The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James (1931) Uncollected Stories
The Short Stories List of Short Stories in Chronological Order List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order
The Children's Books:
The Five Jars (1932) Forty-Two Stories by Hans-Christian Anderson (1930)
The Non-Fiction
Old Testament Legends (1913) Henry the Sixth: A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir (1919) The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts Helps for Students of History (1919) Prologue to Le Fanu's 'Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery' (1923) The Apocryphal New Testament (1924) Introduction to 'Ghosts and Marvels' (1924) Some Remarks on Ghost Stories (1929) Ghosts – Treat Them Gently! (1931)
The Guidebooks Abbeys (1926) Suffolk and Norfolk (1930)
The Memoir
Eton and King's: Recollections, Mostly Trivial, 1875-1925 (1925)This is a nice collection with quite a few photos and illustrations. Have to say that the non-fiction part is interesting, if you are willing to skip the parts in Latein like the reprint of Henry the Sixth.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 16, 2024 19:13:41 GMT
This is a nice collection with quite a few photos and illustrations. It is not without problems, however. I recall seeing a story that had text missing. I would alert them---after all, they sometimes update their editions---but I do not remember which story it was.
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