Welcome to "From the Unquiet Silence"

"A letter once a month, drawn from the quiet, but never still"

A companion to bl-literarymagic.com

The margins of narrative and memory.

For many years, I have studied the genre of the classic ghost story in its richest and most resonant forms. I’ve had the pleasure of teaching university courses devoted entirely to the British ghost story, with a particular focus on the elegant terror crafted by M.R. James and his literary descendants. My work in this field led to membership in Eton College’s Henry VI Society, a distinction awarded in recognition of my contributions to the study of James’s legacy—and my devotion to the upkeep of his nearly forgotten grave (hence my rather sour expression, circa 2011, below).

M.R. James remains the central-most figure in what I consider the literary ghost story—an art form that differs sharply from the American horror tale, with its frequent reliance on gore, shocks, wobbly pan-galactics, and psychological breakdowns. James, by contrast, practiced reticence. He believed in suggestion. He developed ghosts as ruptures in the natural order—intrusions that should remain unknowable.

In that spirit, this newsletter will follow what is often called the Jamesian tradition, a lineage that includes A.C. Benson, E.F. Benson, R.H. Benson, and H.F.W. Tatham—writers who absorbed James’s principles and shaped their own quiet terrors. Others in this direct Jamesian line of descent include Arthur Gray, Arthur Reed Ropes (writing as Adrian Ross), and E.G. Swain, who would collectively create nearly two hundred stories in the so-called Jamesian pattern.

Others, too, would follow shortly after—writers such as D.K. Broster, H. Russell Wakefield, Amyas Northcote, Walter de la Mare, R.H. Malden, Marjorie Bowen, A.N.L. Munby, Eleanor Scott—and the James spark would ignite interest in the divergent literary ghost manifestations of W.H. Hodgson and Algernon Blackwood. But we will also pay our respects to those who came before, including Margaret Oliphant, whose tales of the supernatural James admired for their intelligence and depth of feeling—and, of course, Sheridan Le Fanu.

And, for those only recently entered into this world, M.R. James did not write The Turn of the Screw. That was Henry James (no relation, though they did meet once at Lamb House, with E.F. Benson, for tea—where Henry left Monty with the impression of having spent the afternoon with a rather stuffy butler).

This newsletter will seek to trace the aforementioned Jamesian lineages. It will peer into dusty corners of forgotten libraries. It will raise the curtains on candlelit rooms. And yes, it will sometimes step deeper into darkness than is quite comfortable.

But always—always—with a scholar’s eye.

Here you will find:

• Reflections on M.R. James and the British ghost story tradition

• Analyses of narrative craft and the art of subtle terror

• Thematic threads across supernatural literature and folklore

• Antecedents to and near cousins of the ghost story genre

I won’t clutter your inbox. You’ll receive one newsletter per month—on the first at 08:30 Eastern time: newsletters drawn from the quiet but never still regions. These will be essays that respect your time, challenge your imagination, and keep company with the best ghosts that literature has to offer: the elite of the ghost class, if you will.

And how fitting that we begin today, on May 1st—Beltane, the old Gaelic festival that marked the threshold of summer. Once celebrated with bonfires and floral garlands, Beltane was a liminal moment, a turning of the year when the veil between worlds was thought to thin. Light and dark, life and death, spring and fire.

In that spirit of passage and presence, this newsletter steps forward—rooted in the ghostly past, lit by the brief flare of insight, and moving always toward what might be waiting just out of sight.

As to my newsletter title, From the Unquiet Silence, I plead guilty to a certain melodramatic impulse. With apologies. But there is motive here as well. While it suggests the spectral world that we will investigate, it is also, and foremost, an apt description of the act of reading wherein words speak silently.

If you’re a reader who prefers a spectral chill over a slimy gross out, if you believe that the supernatural is most powerful when it intrudes stealthily, and if you delight in stories that leave a faint echo after the last word, then I suspect you’ll feel at home here.

Next month, we will explore the influence of Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu. In the meantime . . .

Welcome to From the Unquiet Silence—we’ve been waiting for you!

Ever, your fellow spirit,

Brian Jay Corrigan, JD PhD DLitt(h.c.)

New posts arrive the first of every month at 08:30 Eastern and will be reproduced here shortly afterwards.

You can sign up to receive this letter in your inbox on the 1st of every month by following this link: https://professorlitmagic.substack.com/