Ghosts of the Chit-Chat

Such things may have attached to them heaven knows what spooks and spirits. - The IkonOn the evening of Saturday 28 October 1893 Cambridge Universitys Chit-Chat Club convened its 601st meeting. Ten members and one guest gathered in the rooms of Montague Rhodes James the Junior Dean of Kings College and listened - with increasing absorption one suspects - as their host read Two Ghost Stories.Ghosts of the Chit-Chat celebrates this momentous event in the history of supernatural literature the earliest dated record we have of M. R. James reading his ghost stories out loud. And it revives the contributions that other members made to the genre; men of imagination who invoked the ghostly in their work and who are now themselves shades. In a series of essays stories and poems Robert Lloyd Parry looks at the history and culture of the Club.In addition to tales and poems never before reprinted Ghosts of the Chit-Chat features earlier slightly different versions of two of M. R. Jamess best-known ghost stories; Robert Lloyd Parrys profiles and commentaries on each featured Chit-Chat member sheds new light on this supernatural tradition making Ghosts of the Chit-Chat a valuable resource for casual readers and long-time Jamesians alike.