SOURCE: Sullivan, Jack. “Ghost Stories of Other Antiquaries.” In Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood, pp. 91-111. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978.

In the following essay, Sullivan evaluates the influence of M. R. James on several English ghost story writers.

The publication of M. R. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary set in motion a spectral procession of tales about confrontations between antiquaries and beguilingly far-fetched horrors: in E. G. Swain's “The Place of Safety,” the Vicar of Stoneground Parish is visited at night by an order of gigantic monks from the sixteenth century; in R. H. Malden's “The Dining Room Fireplace,” a travelling collector is scared out of his wits by a Dublin fireplace which breathes; in L. P. Hartley's “The Travelling Grave,” an antiquary is swallowed up by a mobile grave with teeth; and in Walter de la Mare's “A. B. O...