‘The notes of an informed Edwardian travel writer’: Tourist landscapes in M. R. James’s ghost stories

Clive Bloom once, somewhat disparagingly, referred to M. R. James’s ghost stories as belonging ‘to modernity and the age of the tourist’. James would have been flattered. As the author of two successful travel guides and an enthusiastic reader of many others, James wrote his ghost stories in the same style as his books for tourists and with the same feeling for landscape. In addition to his spooks and monsters, all the stories feature a place or places James loved and sought to share with his readers. The author provides extraordinarily vivid word pictures, enabling his readers to visualize the place concerned and frequently inciting them to visit it for themselves. The horrors he depicts, although profoundly disturbing, do not detract from the beauty and/or historical interest of the setting. It is therefore unsurprising that, even today, literary tourists may be found seeking traces of James not only in his native East Anglia but also as far afield as the Basque country and Scandinavia.