There are very few creative endeavours to which Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930) was a stranger. Mercer, a collector, archaeologist, historian and tile-maker, took time out from his scholarly, historical and architectural pursuits – and the pressures of operating his tile business – to engage in a variety of other artistic ventures. Often these were pleasant diversions – rest and relaxation for the mind. He played the fiddle, composed poetry, sketched and painted, produced etchings, and listened to and fancied himself a connoisseur of Irish dance music. Leaving nothing undone, or unexplored, he also tried his hand at writing ghost stories. Originally published in 1928, near the end of his life, November Night Tales drew together a collection of stories that Mercer had written and reworked over several years. Another tale, The Well of Monte Corbo, though not included in the original volume, was discovered among his papers and published posthumously. All the stories are set in a world of the fantastic, the mysterious, the horrific, and the magical. In his writing, Mercer found inspiration in the romantic, gothic fiction of the nineteenth century. Authors like Poe, Shelley, Stoker and Conan Doyle were his muses. Along with many other aspects of emergent modernism, it was the writers of the early 1900s that Mercer disdained – Hemingway, for example, was a particular target of Mercer’s scorn The publication of November Night Tales seems to have been an important item on Mercer’s ‘bucket list,’ something he wished to accomplish that would enable him to feel complete at the close of his life, his personal ambitions fulfilled.
Top Posts & Pages
Liddell’s Ghost
Click image to read my short story, 'Liddell’s Ghost' in Cygnus, the Journal of Speculative Fiction.
Changed
Click image to read my short story 'Changed' in The Cynic Online Magazine.
First Date
Click image to read my short story 'First Date' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
Ghost Walk
Click image to read my short story 'Ghost Walk' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
M R James
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Ghosts of Christmas Past
‘There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas,’ wrote Jerome K. Jerome in the introduction to his darkly comic collection Told After Supper (1891), ‘something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails’. Dickens would no doubt agree, […]
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M R James’s Suffolk
The macabre beneath the landscape is not dispelled by nearness to the sea. What Henry James knew, and described in English Hours (1905) – the strangeness present on a flattened seashore – M R James (no blood relation, although the two were acquainted) expressed in two of his best-known ghost stories: Oh, Whistle, and I’ll […]
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A Warning to the Curious
Here’s a real festive treat. In 2000 the BBC produced a series called Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee in which Lee played M R James reading four of his own stories. Lee, who actually once met James, obviously enjoyed making this series and A Warning to the Curious is a real highlight – enjoy!
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Lost Hearts
I have been haunted by the writings of M R James since childhood but when asked what is my favourite of all his ghostly tales I’ve never fully been able to answer. Lost Hearts, an early tale which apparently James didn’t much care for, and which only appeared in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary to […]
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A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Tractate Middoth
Here’s a real treat to conclude the series of Christmas ghost stories that I’ve been posting for the last few weeks – the BBC adaptation of The Tractate Middoth from just a couple of years ago. Fingers crossed they do another one this year!
Ghost Cities 