ARTHUR GRAY (1852–1940) was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge from 1912–40, and it is Jesus College that acts as the backdrop for the series of stories collected as Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye, many of which first appeared in The Cambridge Review.

Here are gathered the true history of the godless and dissolute Everlasting Club, whose members swore to meet annually on All Souls' Day, be they alive or dead, until the ghastly events of their final meeting; the story of the alchemist Anthony Ffryar, last survivor of the plague of 1551; the mystery of the death in 1643 of the mathematician and alleged necromancer Thomas Allen (who may have doubled as the first Jesus College cat); the tale of the theologian Matthew Makepeace who, disappointed in his academic career, discovered in 1604 the secret of how to transfer his soul into the body of a promising undergraduate; and many more.

This edition from Ash-Tree Press includes all of the illustrations by E. Joyce Shillington Scales from the original edition, and also presents additional material, including two fascinating papers presented by Arthur Gray to the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. There is an Introduction by Rosemary Pardoe and Mark Valentine.