‘The Mezzotint' by M.R. James

Introduction by Dan Coxon That Montague Rhodes James was one of the finest writers of supernatural fiction we’ve ever had is surely now beyond dispute. Of all his stories, ‘The Mezzotint’ is the one that I return to most often. In many ways it’s an archetypal James story: in his own words, he felt the two elements a ghost story should have were ‘atmosphere and the nicely-managed crescendo’, and he achieves both here with admirable efficiency. Where ‘The Mezzotint’ really scores for me, though, i