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    The Five Jars
    The Five Jars
    The Five Jars
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    The Five Jars

    By M. R. James

    3.5/5

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    M. R. James was born in Kent, England in 1862. James came to writing fiction relatively late, not publishing his first collection of short stories - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) - until the age of 42. Modern scholars now see James as having redefined the ghost story for the 20th century and he is seen as the founder of the 'antiquarian ghost story'. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions with a brand new introductory biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJan 18, 2016
    ISBN9781473379329
    Author

    M. R. James

    Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage, Kent, where his father was a curate, but the family moved soon afterwards to Great Livermere in Suffolk. James attended Eton College and later King's College Cambridge where he won many awards and scholarships. From 1894 to 1908 he was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and from 1905 to 1918 was Provost of King's College. In 1913, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University for two years. In 1918 he was installed as Provost of Eton. A distinguished medievalist and scholar of international status, James published many works on biblical and historical antiquarian subjects. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930. His ghost story writing began almost as a divertissement from his academic work and as a form of entertainment for his colleagues. His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was published in 1904. He never married and died in 1936.

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I downloaded this enjoyable children's fairy story from Project Gutenberg along with M.R. James' ghost stories.A man digs up a box containing 5 jars of ointment, and opens one each night, finding that each gives him a different power, including talking to his cat and seeing the fairy village on the lawn outside his window. Being able to communicate with the fairy boys comes in handy, as there are dark forces at work trying to get hold of the jars.
    • 3/5
      A very peculiar fantasy story that reminded me a lot of Edward Eager's children's books. The whimsical-yet-creepy atmosphere is similar to books like Eager's "Seven Day Magic." This is not as good, though, because the story doesn't have a strong enough plot to use all the magic to good effect. It ends very abruptly and I was left thinking, "Huh, that's it?" It was engrossing, however, and I was never bored.

    Book preview

    The Five Jars - M. R. James

    The Five Jars

    By

    M. R. James

    Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

    This book is copyright and may not be

    reproduced or copied in any way without

    the express permission of the publisher in writing

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

    Contents

    M. R. James

    I. THE DISCOVERY

    II. THE FIRST JAR

    III. THE SECOND JAR

    IV. THE SMALL PEOPLE

    V. DANGER TO THE JARS

    VI. THE CAT, WAG, SLIM AND OTHERS

    VII. THE BAT-BALL

    VIII. WAG AT HOME

    M. R. James

    Montague Rhodes James was born in Kent, England in 1862. An intellectually gifted child, he excelled academically at both Temple Grove School and Eton College before enrolling at King’s College, Cambridge. A highly respected scholar to this day, James’ areas of research interest were apocryphal Biblical literature and mediaeval illuminated manuscripts. He was, by turns, Fellow, Dean, and Tutor at King’s College, and in 1905 was installed as Provost. James was a highly sociable man, and he travelled widely throughout Europe.

    James came to writing fiction relatively late, not publishing his first collection of short stories – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) – until the age of 42. Many of his tales were written as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to friends. James described his introduction to ghosts in 1931: In my childhood I chanced to see a toy Punch and Judy set, with figures cut out in cardboard. One of these was The Ghost. It was a tall figure habited in white with an unnaturally long and narrow head, also surrounded with white, and a dismal visage. Upon this my conceptions of a ghost were based, and for years it permeated my dreams. James believed that must a good story must put the reader into the position of saying to himself: ‘If I’m not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!’ He eventually published five collections of his ghost stories, all of which were reprinted and adapted numerous times.

    Modern scholars now see James as having redefined the ghost story for the 20th century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James’s tales tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests, and he is seen as the founder of the ‘antiquarian ghost story’. His first two collections – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and More Ghost Stories (1911) – are generally regarded as his most important, containing as they do the well-known stories ‘Number 13’, ‘Count Magnus’, ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ and ‘Casting the Runes’.

    The onset of World War One marked the beginning of the end of James’ golden years in Cambridge. In 1918, he accepted the post of Provost of Eton College. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930, and died in 1936, aged 73.

    I.

    THE DISCOVERY

    My Dear Jane,

    You remember that you were puzzled when I told you I had heard something from the owls—or if not puzzled (for I know you have some experience of these things), you were at any rate anxious to know exactly how it happened. Perhaps the time has now come for you to be told.

    It was really luck, and not any skill of mine, that put me in the way of it; luck, and also being ready to believe more than I could see. I have promised not to put down on paper the name of the wood where it happened: that can keep till we meet; but all the rest I can tell exactly as it came about.

    It is a wood with a stream at the edge of it; the water is brown and clear. On the other side of it are flat meadows, and beyond these a hillside quite covered with an oak wood. The stream has alder-trees along it, and is pretty well shaded over; the sun hits it in places and makes flecks of light through the leaves.

    The day I am thinking of was a very hot one in early September. I had come across the meadows with some idea of sitting by the stream and reading. The only change in my plans that I made was that instead of sitting down I lay down, and instead of reading I went to sleep.

    You know how sometimes—but very, very seldom—you see something in a dream which you are quite sure is real. So it was with me this time. I did not dream any story or see any people; I only dreamt of a plant. In the dream no one told me anything about it: I just saw it growing under a tree: a small bit of the tree root came into the picture, an old gnarled root covered with moss, and with three sorts of eyes in it, round holes trimmed with moss—you know the kind. The plant was not one I should have thought much about, though certainly it was not one that I knew: it had no flowers or berries, and grew quite squat in the ground; more like a yellow aconite without the flower than anything else. It seemed to consist of a ring of six leaves spread out pretty flat with nine points on each leaf. As I say, I saw this quite clearly, and remembered it because six times nine makes fifty-four, which happens to be a number which I had a particular reason for remembering at that moment.

    Well, there was no more in the dream than that: but, such as it was, it fixed itself in my mind like a photograph, and I was sure that if ever I saw that tree root and that plant, I should know them again. And, though I neither saw nor heard anything more of them than I have told you, it was borne in upon my mind that the plant was worth finding.

    When I woke up I still lay, feeling very lazy, on the grass with my head within a foot or two of the edge of the stream and listened to its noise, until in five or six minutes—whether I began to doze off again or not does not much matter—the water-sound became like words, and said, Trickle-up, trickle-up, an immense number of times. It pleased me, for though in poetry we hear a deal about babbling brooks, and though I am particularly fond of the noise they make, I never was able before to pretend that I could hear any words. And when I did finally get up and shake myself awake I thought I would anyhow pay so much attention to what the water said as to stroll up the stream instead of down. So I did: it took me through the flat meadows, but still along the edge of the wood, and still every now and then I heard the same peculiar noise which sounded like Trickle-up.

    Not so very long after, I came to a place where another stream ran out of the wood into the one I had been following, and just below the place where the two joined there was—not a bridge, but a pole across, and another pole to serve as a rail, by which you could cross, without trouble. I did cross, not thinking much about it, but with

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