A stories perfected many key elements of the definitive ghost story. These include plot elements: a arcadian setting within the little village, rural community or even even even venerable university; the characterless & like naif gentleman scholar when protagonist; & the discovery of an old book or more antiquarian object that somehow calls down the wrath, or at least unwished-for attention, of a supernatural menace, unremarkably from either beyond the grave. James as well perfected a literary system of a genre: narrating supernatural cases in the main across illation & guide & allowing his reader fill in the blanks; & focusing on the mundane details of his settings & characters sequentially to throw the horrific & flakey elements into greater relief. H. P. Lovecraft was a great enthusiast, extolling the stories as the peak of the ghost story form in his definitive essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1925-27). A second comparatively easily-known fan of James in the horror & fantasy genre was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote an essay in him. Creator John Bellairs paid homage to James by incorporating plot elements borrowed from either James' ghost stories into many of his have adolescent mysteries.

There keep around been many radio and television adaptations of James stories, mostly in Britain. 2 of the right-known & virtually all extremely purported one TV dramas, "Whistle and I'll Come to You" (1968) & "A Warning to the Curious" (1972), come available in DVD from the British Film Institute. A BBC, in an extended-standing tradition, utilized to broadcast the reading of an M. R. James story both Christmas.

the merely notable film version up to now has been a British adaptation by Jacques Tourneur of "Casting the Runes," under a like other attention-getting title of Nighttime of the Demon (1957; U.S. title: Curse of the Demon). Patch somewhat additional literal than a original story, which was loosely according to a distasteful reputation of Aleister Crowley, a film is usually considered one of the high points of the horror film. Opinion is, but, divided on the merits of the like un-Jamesian guide (allegedly against Tourneur's wishes) to explicitly indicate the favorite results demon with a bulb-fingered project divine by mediaeval woodcuts.

When M. R. James is better remembered for his ghost stories, his output of mediaeval scholarship was fantastic. He catalogued numerous of the manuscript libraries of the Cambridge & Oxford colleges. Among his more scholarly works, he wrote A Apocalypse inside Art, which situated illuminated Apocalypse manuscripts into families. He as well translated a Just released Testament Apocrypha.