The Tractate Middoth
short story by M. R. James
"The Tractate Middoth" is a short ghost story by the English author M. R. James. It was published in 1911 in More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, James's second collection of ghost stories.
Plot summary
Mr. Garrett, an employee of a university library, searches for a Mishnaic book - Talmud: Tractate Middoth, with the commentary of Nachmanides - for an impatient library patron named John Eldred. While searching, he encounters a black-clad clergyman who also seems interested in the book. The clergyman's appearance–his head appears to be enshrouded in cobwebs and he smells of mould and dust–causes Garrett a severe shock and he faints. He is sent home to recover and later decides to recuperate at the seaside.
On the train to his destination, he meets the elderly Mrs. Simpson and her daughter, proprietors of a boarding house who offer him lodgings. Over the course of his stay, they become very friendly.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Tractate Middoth” is short story by M. R. James. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tractate, Middoth and short, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “short story by M. R. James” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16746342. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Tractate Middoth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.