“He had no time for fiction that sought to be nauseating, but story after story demonstrates his willingness to be as frightening as possible Nor was his definition of the ghostly confined to revenants. His tales swarm with spiders either giant or multitudinous, immense, half-glimpsed insects, tentacled demons and even worse familiars to be found down wells, or most nightmarish of all, under your pillow”
(Ramsey Campbell in Fortean Times #292, September 2012)
“The peculiar genius of M. R. James, and his greatest power, lies in the convincing evocation of weird, malignant and preternatural phenomena such as I have instanced. It is safe to say that few writers, dead or living, have equaled him in this formidable necromancy and perhaps no one has excelled him.”
“M.R. James joins the brisk, the light, & the commonplace to the weird about as well as anyone could do it — but if another tried the same method, the chances would be ten to one against him. The most valuable element in him — as a model — is his way of weaving a horror into the every-day fabric of life & history — having it grow naturally out of the myriad conditions of an ordinary environment…”
(H. P. Lovecraft to Emil Petaja, 6 March 1935)