M. R. James was the greatest student of medieval manuscripts in the English-speaking world during the first third of the twentieth century. He also made vast contributions to a variety of related subjects, most notably the studies of extrabiblical apocrypha and Christian art and archaeology. His ghost stories made him probably the best-known writer of that genre in his generation. He held positions of national importance in England, as provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905-1918), vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913-1915), and provost of Eton College from 1918 to his death in 1936.

Montague Rhodes James was born in a country rectory in Kent, the fourth child of the Reverend Herbert James and Mary Emily Horton. When Monty (as he was often known) was three years old, his father accepted the living of Great Livermere, near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, which was the family home until Herbert...