I picked up a secondhand copy of the Penguin paperback edition of the "The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James", having owned a copy years ago which someone borrowed and never returned.
James was much anthologized over the years, so it is a rare ghost story fan who hasn't come across one of his tales. This tome, however, as it says on the cover, is the complete collection of his short fiction.
They're deeply creepy stories, much more unsettling than the grand guignol effects of horror; to use the clichéd expression, definitely not tales to be read with the lights out. The modern writer that comes closest is Peter Straub, but he tends more towards magic realism. James himself was influenced by the great Sheridan Le Fanu (of whom more later).
James' prose is crisp and clean, albeit with a substantial amount of Latin phrases, and his ghosts are authentically unpredictable and arbitrary, with a tendency to afflict innocent and guilty alike. Many stories are set in the 18th century, a period which James obviously had a considerable affinity for, and a sense of history and antiquity pervades them all.
Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys the more "spooky" sort of horror fiction, and most of the stories are available online on Project Gutenberg here, along with his extraordinary "Old Testament Legends" (with creepy illustrations!).
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