Manuscripts, museums and stories read aloud
Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 and attended Eton before entering King’s College, Cambridge, in 1882. A fellowship followed in 1887. His descriptive catalogues of medieval manuscripts established standards of scholarship, while an interest in churches, books and antiquities extended beyond his professional appointments.
James directed the Fitzwilliam Museum from 1893 to 1908 and became provost of King’s in 1905. He returned to Eton as provost in 1918 and remained there until his death in 1936. Ghost stories written for friends and read aloud at Cambridge developed alongside this academic life. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary appeared in 1904; further volumes preceded the collected edition of 1931.
The danger inside an attractive discovery
The retained file is a Faded Page digital edition posted in 2013, reproducing the 1931 collected text. The catalogue’s cover belongs to the same collected work; its appearance does not establish the digital Reader’s printing history. In his preface James identifies the stories as inventions and warns that some apparent erudition is fabricated.
Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book lets Dennistoun’s delight in an old volume compete with a crucifix, a landlady’s behaviour and the feeling of someone behind him. Lost Hearts instead places a child under an adult’s apparently generous protection. The scholar seeks a valuable object; the child depends on a person. In both, good fortune creates exposure, and familiar details gradually become difficult to dismiss. James’s professional world gives these accounts texture while the stories manipulate the authority that texture seems to promise.
