Beschreibung:

JAMES, Montague Rhodes (1862-1936). Ghost Stories of an Antiquary . London: Edward Arnold, 1904. 8 o. 16-page publisher's advertisement at end dated November 1904. Frontispiece and plates by James McBryde Original natural yapped-edged linen, black-lettered and red-ruled on front cover and spine (some light wear at ends of spine); cloth folding case. Provenance : A. Vere Woodman (signature dated 1908 on front free endpaper). FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK. "The modern master of the genre insisted with excess modesty that he was only following in the footsteps of Sheridan Le Fanu, who was the master. But James added a distinctive element of 'scholarship'--he was himself a great scholar, recognized as such by Lord Acton when James was only 30--and he used a style at once stripped and skillfully pedantic which was all his own. Almost all his tales were superbly successful" (Jacques Barzun & Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime , New York, 1971, no. 3427).