For the Dead Remember

Deeply researched, always engaging, occasionally contentious - Darryl Jones’s life of M R James is the fullest, frankest account yet written of this curious, reticent, funny man, and the worlds that he inhabited and imagined. A fine companion to the peerless ghost stories. * Robert Lloyd Parry, editor of Friends and Spectres *
For the Dead Remember is an achievement of scholarship and storytelling worth celebrating. Not only does it bring to life one of the greatest supernatural writers of all time, a man shielded from both others and himself, but also the lost world through which he moved, and does so in a manner that is witty, generous, and ultimately moving. As an evocation of M. R. James and his circle, and a reminder of the dark glory of his tales, it is unlikely ever to be bettered. * John Connolly, author of A River Red With Blood *
Comprehensive, erudite and insightful; this is the definitive biography of M.R. James. * Andrew Smith, author of The Ghost Story 1840-1920 *
An original and vivid account of the Victorian academic gentleman’s world, with male friendship, rigid adherence to tradition, and devout institutionalism at its core. Jones’s storytelling is so compelling that the book is hard to set down, even as its deep research enables the spirit of the age to shine through the lives of James and his contemporaries. * Victoria Rosner, author of Machines for Living *
Jones has done a huge amount of work on this biography, which tells you everything you could possibly want to know about James … By seeking to situate James within his own time and place, Darryl Jones provides a real insight into how we might understand him * William Whyte, Literary Review *
Exhaustively researched … It is hard to imagine anyone producing a more thorough, well-documented and sympathetic biography than this one * Eamon Duffy, The Tablet *
This book is to be read for its sweep through this incredibly turbulent, often strikingly sad at a personal level, period of British history * Richard Lofthouse, QUAD magazine *
For historians and ghost-story enthusiasts alike; for scholars and those amongst us intrigued by the complexities of the human condition, For The Dead Remember is an achievement of biography that invites the reader into the curious, tender, and powerful inner world of M R James * Unseen Histories *
It’s difficult to imagine a better account of James’s life ever being written * John Connolly, Irish Times *
An excellent new biography by Darryl Jones…a very good book about a very interesting man * Alexander Poots, UnHerd *
a book beyond reproach in its level of detail and attention to primary sources. It has been a long time coming, and eagerly awaited by many, and in this year of the 90th anniversary of James’s death, it does justice to the man and does not disappoint. … an addictive and compelling read * Francis Young, Historian and Folklorist *
the definitive biography of the man who gifted us such pleasing terrors … [this] meticulous study uncovers more details about the influences and origins of MRJ’s ghost stories than any previous work, making it indispensable to any lover of the genre … absolutely not to be missed * Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue *

Darryl Jones is Professor of Modern British Literature and Culture at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author or editor of fourteen books and numerous articles, mostly on nineteenth-century literature and popular literature. In 2011, he edited the Oxford World’s Classics edition of M. R. James’s Collected Ghost Stories. He is the General Editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, for which series he edited The Hound of the Baskervilles.

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