An exceptionally bright young man, James was educated at Temple Grove and Eton College, where his first essay (on ghost stories) was published in 1880 in the Eton Rambler, a school magazine. James then went to King's College, Cambridge, becoming a Fellow in 1887. From 1893 to 1908 he held the post of Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and from 1905 to 1918 he was the Provost of King's College. In 1930, he was awarded the Order of Merit. In 1904, James published Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, which was very successful running to numerous editions and considered by many to be the most important work on the supernatural of the twentieth century. More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary followed in 1911, then A Thin Ghost and Others (1919) and, the final set of ghost stories, A Warning to the Curious in 1925. In addition to his ghost stories, James wrote a number of essays on ghosts and the occult from a more scholarly perspective. James' only novel was The Five Jars (1922), a children's book. His other many works included Old Testament Legends (1913), The Apocryphal New Testament (1924), Abbeys (1925), Eton and King's (1926), Wailing Well (1928), Judith (1928), The Book of Tobit (1929) and Suffolk and Norfolk (1930). |
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