Classic ghost story breaks records
Published just in time for Christmas, Long Barn Books’ beautiful limited edition of M R James’s chilling tale, Oh whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad, was produced in record-breaking time by J F Print. The project was completed in just three weeks from initial idea to delivery of finished copies.
Long Barn Books’ Susan Hill – best-selling author of another classic English ghost story, The Woman in Black – explains: “I discovered by chance that the BBC were showing a new dramatisation of the classic M R James ghost story Oh whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad. It so happened that I was writing a piece about James for the Christmas issue of The Spectator and saw that the story was only available in some general ghost story anthologies, or a rather cheap mass-produced paperback of some MRJ.
“But people might just want to read the one story, before or after seeing the TV version. So I set to and we have made it happen.
“Long Barn Books is very fortunate – we work with terrific people who are always up for a challenge. Julie Martin, our designer, set the story onto the page in the handsome Venetian font. Andy English was about to take a trip to the East Anglian coast where the story is set, so produced a wonderfully dark brooding illustration which is also embossed on the cover. Then J F Print found a small store of hand-made Italian paper left over from a previous special order which is perfect for just the right number of copies.”
Oh whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad, by M R James, is published by Long Barn Books at £6.99 paperback
www.longbarnbooks.com