Symposium
Leeds Library
University of Leeds
March 28, 2015

“M.R. James and the Modern Ghost Story”

Confirmed Keynotes:

Helen Grant (Author)
Darryl Jones (Trinity College, Dublin)
Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck College, University of London)

This one-day symposium is the first such event dedicated entirely to M.R. James’s ghost stories. Its aim is to bring together researchers with an interest in James’s fiction in order to assess the significance of his ghost stories from a range of theoretical, literary and historical perspectives.

The ghost stories of Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) are amongst the most influential in the English language. Never out of print, they have been adapted numerous times for stage, screen and other media and their formal and thematic features have come to embody the very model of the traditional English ghost story. Although widely read and tremendously influential, his stories have received little academic attention. This symposium will foster further discussion and analysis of these tales and their place in late-Victorian and Edwardian literature and culture.

The conference will be followed by a public screening of A Warning to the Curious (BBC, 1972) and a discussion with the writer/director, Lawrence Gordon Clark.

Registration is now open. For further details, see the Registration page.