A Thin Ghost and Others

M R James (1862 - 1936) was a writer and British medieval scholar. His well-known classic ghost stories have a Victorian Christmas theme. Although James is best known for his ghost stories he produced many excellent scholarly works. He is also credited with cataloging libraries at Oxford and Cambridge. Stories included in this collection are The Residence at Whitminster, The Diary of Mr. Poynter, An Episode of Cathedral History, The Story of a Disappearance and An Appearance, and Two Doctors.

Montague Rhodes James (1862 - 1936), who published under the name M. R. James, was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905-18) and of Eton College (1918-36). Though James's work as a medievalist is still highly regarded, he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James's protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story". --Wikipedia