The details of horror are almost never explicit, the stories relying on a gentle, bucolic background to emphasize the awfulness of the otherworldly intrusions.

Neat inked name to upper front free end paper, offsetting to end papers, some mild foxing to prelims, mild darkening to spine, a nearly fine copy. Among the eight extremely creepy stories in this volume is the frequently anthologized tale, "The Mezzotint" Bleiler, Supernatural Fiction, p.Canon Alberic's scrap-book -- Lost hearts -- The mezzotint -- The ash-tree -- Number 13 -- Count Magnus -- 'Oh whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad' -- The treasure of Abbot Thomas. Sus introducciones tienden a ser algo tediosas, y no es exactamente fácil de leer, pero es un verdadero maestro de lo escalofriante. My personal favorite story of James' from the first eight stories is "Lost Hearts," a story about a young orphaned boy who is adopted by his eccentric uncle, and begins to become disturbed by sights of two other children - children who match the description of ones whom his uncle had previously taken into his care and then they disappeared without trace. When he has you thoroughly involved and at your most somnambulant, it is only then that the inexplicable suddenly rears its head, usually byway of a few powerful images that change the dream to nightmare. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

Often the stories revolve around an ancient artifact able to invoke the otherworldly that is discovered by these particularly luckless individuals (though they often feel themselves lucky indeed when they first make their discoveries).

James was very like a character common in his ghost stories, an academic combining a mixture of innocence with obsessive scholarship.

It has been reprinted more times than any other book in this field, and it contains several of the best ghost stories in the English language. James wrote: ‘In the infancy of the art [of writing ghost stories] we needed the haunted castle on a beetling rock to put us in the right frame [of mind],’ but, he expounded, a ghost is much more effective in a setting that is ‘contemporary and even ordinary. In Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, David Timson consistently pronounces the name ’Comminges’ as ’Commeen’ – as if it had been printed in his script without the letter G, making it ’Commines ’.

Among them are such favorites as "Number Thirteen," "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book," and "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad. i-vi] vii-ix [x] xi [xii] 1 [2] 3-270 [271-272: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original tan buckram, front and spine panels stamped in orange and black, rear panel stamped in orange, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. A superb Ninth Impression of these tales that "have come to be seen as the epitome of the English ghost story. Front hinge is starting on the exterior, but the interior gutters for both the front and back covers remain secure. Typical foxing and two small stains to front cover, two owner's inscriptions to FFEP, front hinge just starting at head, otherwise a very sound and handsome copy.