Book excerpt: CLASSIC EARLY HORROR IN THE STYLE OF MR JAMES BY A FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE "The haunted house story becomes a real nerve-shredder..." 'Adrian Ross' was a great name to conjure with in the early years of the 20th century. A founding father of 'musical comedy', this celebrated librettist wrote over two thousand lyrics and worked on around sixty popular musicals, including the hugely successful English versions of The Merry Widow and Lilac Time. In his completely different earlier life, under his own name of Arthur R. Ropes, he was a multi-talented Cambridge don, a Senior Fellow at King's College during the 1880s, alongside M.R. James. He composed two impressive works of supernatural horror fiction - both narrated by Cambridge scholars - which appear here together in one volume for the first time. Ross and James were among the first writers of the late nineteenth century who moved away from the familiar traditional Victorian ghosts to the much stranger world of centuries-old demons, all extremely dangerous and horrifying, defying any clear description. For example, the traditional haunted house tale takes a hideous descent into grave terror here. While the Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James have been widely available for decades, it is now time for the collected horror fiction of 'Adrian Ross' to be available for the present 21st century generation. OTHER RARE, CLASSIC HORROR LITERATURE FROM OLEANDER RANDALLS ROUND by Eleanor Scott (Cut & Paste 9780900891953 to search) TEDIOUS BRIEF TALES OF GRANTA AND GRAMARYE by Ingulphus (Cut & Paste 9780906672860 to search) STONEGROUND GHOST TALES by EG Swain (Cut & Paste 9780906672433 to search)