Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

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He warns against revealing too much too soon, or giving way to excess, citing Dracula (1897) as a story where the horrors are like butter ‘spread far too thick. Leah Moore and John Reppion] offer graphic retellings of some truly terrifying tales, retellings that manage to capture the tactile nature of James' hauntings and horrors.

As a fan of the originals (I love classic genre fiction and horror in particular) and of only the best graphic novels (as an artist myself I’m very fussy about artwork) I couldn’t resist trying this but was expecting it to have some aspects that I fundamentally disliked. He took the 18th century fictional convention of horror stories, known as ‘Gothic’, from their settings of dark ruined Castles or damp claustrophobic dungeons where danger or the unknown lurked, and showed that the past can have a more disturbing hold over the present than that conjured by those stereotypes. The disparate artistic styles really work in the book's favour and provide a wonderful counterpoint to the imagery from prevoius illustrations and BBC adaptations.Number 13' – What happens when you book a room in an inn that used to belong to a man accused of having been an alchemist and magician several generations ago?

She was also the contributing editor of Electricomics flagship release, co-writing the sci-fi story Sway, with art by Nicola Scott. In the twentieth-century literature of the supernatural, the single most important book, in the opinion of most scholars and enthusiasts, is Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by Montague Rhodes James. Most of his stories are concerned with the 'evil that dieth not but lieth in wait,' with a fine use of the exotica of antiquarianism. James' first collection of ghost stories inspired by his academic interests in medievalism, antiquarianism and bibliography, including the frequently anthologised stories "The Mezzotint", "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to you my Lad", and "Canon Alberic's Scrap Book". The stories are not what most people would consider scary but they are beautifully written and atmospheric.Featuring eight tales: 'Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book'; 'Lost Hearts'; 'The Mezzotint'; 'The Ash-Tree'; 'Number 13'; 'Count Magnus'; 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad', and 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas'. Original edition was published in and this unique edition is Reprinted in 2008 with the help of original edition. Among the eight extremely creepy stories in this volume is the frequently anthologized tale, "The Mezzotint" Bleiler, Supernatural Fiction, p. He was convinced his apparitions should always be terrifying and never benign, and to achieve this he was not averse to using some of the old familiar trappings of the Gothic genre.

Pages bright, with instances of light spotting throughout, most concentrated to pages facing plates. His introductions tend to be kinda tedious, and he is not exactly easy to read, but he's a true master of eeriness. i-vi] vii-ix [x] xi [xii] 1 [2] 3-270 [271-272: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original tan buckram, front and spine panels stamped in orange and black, rear panel stamped in orange, fore and bottom edges untrimmed.His quiet, contented and uneventful life outside his studies consisted of bicycle rides, church music and games of patience, seemingly the only frisson being provided by the telling of ghost stories at Christmas to a group of friends after dinner in a room lit by a single candle. The book, like many of Hooke's, was subsequently made into a film, The Gypsy and the Gentleman (1958). R. James’s stories explore the darkness just beyond the flicker of the candle, behind the creaking door.