M.R. James: An Informal Portrait

by Michael Cox

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, 1st Edition Oxford University Press, 1983. xiii, 268pp. Profuse illustrations from photographs. Very good clean tight sound square, no bookplate, inscriptions or ownership marks of any kind. In bright gilt lettered and illustrated brown cloth boards, together with original unclipped portrait pictorial dustwrapper featuring Straang's watercolour of Cambridge University to upper, and Gwendolyn McBryde's painted interpretation of the Ghost Stories of James to rear. Very slight rubbing to spine and upper leading corner, and the very lightest of pale foxing limited to top edges of leaves, visible only from above, not intruding in the least. Firmly held in joints and hinges, edges crisp. A great addition to the library of reader, scholar and collector alike.

Genres: History, Biography

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

This is Michael^Cox, where ^=space. (default profile)

About the Author:
Michael Andrew Cox was an English biographer, novelist and musician.
He also held the position of Senior Commissioning Editor of reference books for Oxford University Press.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A warm, soft-focus portrait of one of England's most beloved dons, Cox's biography of Montague Rhodes James dwells on the scholar's public life as dean and provost of King's College, Cambridge, and later as provost of Eton College. Cox takes us on a tour of the privileged world of Edwardian Englands's public schools and universities, where scholars made their names and careers with a successful dissertation on Silver Age Latin authors and amused themselves with cricket, bicycling, amateur theatricals, and ghost stories told by candlelight.

Cox is an anthologist of English popular fiction, and I took up this biography of one of England's greatest ghost story writers, hoping to learn more about James's ghastly tales. I'm sorry to write that I was very disappointed. Aside from the stories themselves, James said little about his methods or aims in creating his ghost stories, and Cox offers little by way of interpretation or elucidation. It seems that a thorough study of James's fiction remains to be written.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written pre Internet biography that focuses wholly on the life, this is more of M R James the University man and his movements there in who happens to be more well known as a writer of ghost stories, rather than the other way around. The chapter that looks at his ghost writing speeds along quickly, which gives perhaps the impression that there might not be much about of M R James giving his opinions on his own stories because the book goes into depth about his journey through the ranks of the universities. A fascinating insight into this brilliant scholar who could tell the age of a manuscript by merely sniffing it, who happened by the way to have written some of the most unique ghost stories in the English language.

[Zandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

As other Goodreads reviewers have said, this biography focuses on M.R. James's steps from Etonian and Kingsman, to ending up as Provost of both. His writing, both academic and imaginative, gets short shift. I felt Monty James had an immensely privileged existence, as he made his way in an elite world with ease and natural grace, and never ventured beyond the educational establishments where he felt at home to test himself at money-making or people-managing in the wider world. Surely such an institutionalized man can have only a passing interest, as a curiosity from a gentler, kinder bygone era? But this is not so: the oddity is that this remote and comfort-loving man was also the writer of ghost stories that still have the power to grab and grip and grind down the nerves of any unsuspecting reader. Monty's stories are filled with wonderfully archaic details, but they also hit on something timeless and universal. Michael Cox does not explore this paradox explicitly, but his book gives an engaging and fair account of James's life.

[Fred Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

More readable that RW Pfaff's Montague Rhodes James, although Pfaff is the book if you are interested in James as a medievalist. Cox provides a balanced account of James and of the English academic world, especially Eton and Kings, during the late 19th and early 20th century. He gives the ghost stories a fair amount of attention, less to James' academic work.