James's scholarly work is still highly regarded,[1] but he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are considered by many critics and authors as the finest in the English language and widely influential on modern horror.

He is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story" and "the Father of Folk Horror" for the way his plots and characters drew on his own scholarly interests in ancient folklore and the rural landscapes of East Anglia.

[4][5] This association has continued into the 21st century due to the many adaptations of his stories, which have made him, according to critic Jon Dear, "the go-to folk horror writer".

[6] James was born in a clergy house in Goodnestone, Dover, Kent, England, although his parents had associations with Aldeburgh in Suffolk.

His father was Herbert James, an Evangelical Anglican clergyman, and his mother, Mary Emily (née Horton), was the daughter of a naval officer.

Several of James's ghost stories are set in Suffolk, including "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" (Felixstowe), "A Warning to the Curious" (Aldeburgh), "Rats" and "A Vignette" (Great Livermere).

His discovery of a manuscript fragment led to excavations in the ruins of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, in 1902, in which the graves of several twelfth-century abbots described by Jocelyn de Brakelond (a contemporary chronicler) were rediscovered, having been lost since the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

[16][17] He held the Sandars Readership in Bibliography two times, speaking on "Manuscripts in Cambridge" in 1902 and "The Pictorial Illustration of the Old Testament from the 14th Century to the 16th" in 1923.

His ability to wear his learning lightly is apparent in his Suffolk and Norfolk (Dent, 1930), in which a great deal of knowledge is presented in a popular and accessible form, and in Abbeys.

The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following elements: According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!

'"[24] He also perfected the technique of narrating supernatural events through implication and suggestion, letting his reader fill in the blanks, and focusing on the mundane details of his settings and characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater relief.

"[24] Despite his suggestion (in the essay "Stories I Have Tried to Write") that writers employ reticence in their work, many of James's tales depict scenes and images of savage and often disturbing violence.

Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, 'the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded; the weltering and wallowing that I too often encounter merely recall the methods of M G Lewis.

His authorial revulsion from tactile contact with other people has been noted by Julia Briggs in Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (1977).

Or, to put it another way, "Although James conjures up strange beasts and supernatural manifestations, the shock effect of his stories is usually strongest when he is dealing in physical mutilation and abnormality, generally sketched in with the lightest of pens.

[30] He disliked most contemporary literature, strongly criticising the work of Aldous Huxley, Lytton Strachey and James Joyce (whom he called "a charlatan" and "that prostitutor of life and language").

[34] Mary Butts, another admirer, wrote the first critical essay on his work, "The Art of Montagu James", in the February 1934 issue of the London Mercury.

He dressed and looked like an old Sea Salt, and in his gruff voice would tell us stories by firelight in the boys' room of an evening with all the lights out and his back to the fire.

[40] A large number of British writers deliberately wrote ghost stories in the Jamesian style; these writers, sometimes described as the "James Gang",[39] include A. N. L. Munby, E. G. Swain, "Ingulphus" (pseudonym of Sir Arthur Gray, 1852–1940), Amyas Northcote[41] and R. H. Malden, although some commentators consider their stories to be inferior to those of James himself.

[43] L. T. C. Rolt also modelled his ghost stories on James's work, but, unlike other Jamesian writers, set them in industrial locations, such as mines and railways.

Gerald Heard's novel The Black Fox, published in 1950, is an occult thriller inspired by "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral".

It starred Alfred Marks (as Abbot Thomas), Robert Bathurst, Denise Coffey, Jonathan Adams and Bill Wallis.

In 1989, Ramsey Campbell published the short story "The Guide", which takes an antiquarian on a macabre journey to a ruined church after following marginalia in a copy of James's guidebook Suffolk and Norfolk.

Chris Priestley's Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror (2007) is a volume of ghost stories influenced by James in mood, atmosphere, and subject matter, as the title suggests.

In 2008 the English experimental neofolk duo The Triple Tree, featuring Tony Wakeford and Andrew King from Sol Invictus, released the album Ghosts on which all but three songs were based upon the stories of James.

[49] One of the songs, "Three Crowns" (based on the short story "A Warning to the Curious"), also appeared on the compilation album John Barleycorn Reborn (2007).

During the ninth series broadcast in 2021, which underwent a format change due to the coronavirus pandemic, Oswald 'Uncle Newt' Nightingale, analogous with Finnemore's storyteller character, meets M. R. James during the Christmas of 1898 as a young boy, who proceeds to tell him the story of The Rose Garden.

Later in Uncle Newt's life (or earlier in the series), he tells an iteration of said story whilst babysitting Deborah and Myra Wilkinson.