To celebrate the release of our Self Made Hero book of M. R. James adaptations – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Vol 1 – we’re going to be counting down to Christmas in true Jamesian style, with a new ghostly image and nugget of info every day.
Day 16: “THE HAUNTED DOLLS HOUSE”
Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House was a gift to Queen Mary from the nation; a showcase for contemporary craft and design, it preserved for history the ideal home of the 1920s, at a scale of one foot to one inch. Princess Marie Louise, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, conceived the idea, and through her influence many famous artists, designers, authors and craftsmen contributed to the project. The dolls’ house library contains, alongside standard works such as four tiny Bibles, miniature atlases and a complete works of Shakespeare, over 200 diminutive editions of contemporary British literature.
Princess Marie Louise personally wrote to the most famous writers of the time to ask for either an original composition or a suitable passage from work already published, transcribed by hand or submitted for professional copying.
One of the authors approached was M. R. James who composed a new story entitled The Haunted Dolls House for the miniature library. The tiny volume is fully leather bound in vellum with gold tooling and can be seen at royalcollection.org.uk
Moore & Reppion will be introducing a rare screening of two classic films from the BBC’s Ghost Story For Christmas series – The Signalman & Whistle And I’ll Come To You – at FACT Liverpool on Wednesday the 21st of December at 7pm.
The screening is part of Picturehouse’s nationwide A Warning to the Curious: Ghost Stories at Christmas season.