James McBryde

James McBryde

James McBryde (1874, Shrewsbury (England) - 1904, London). He entered the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge, with the idea of ​​continuing the family medical saga. There he met then-Professor M. R. James and, despite the difference in status and ages between the two, the two became great friends.

The friendship between M. R. James and James McBryde was not interrupted after he graduated in 1896, and entered the Royal College of Physicians in London, and during the following years they continued to spend their summer holidays together. During the first tour of Scandinavia in August 1899, MR James fancied that the three were participating in an expedition promoted by the Fitzwilliam Museum to capture a live troll, the germ of Chronicle's plot of a trolley hunt, which he would fully develop James McBryde.

In 1902 James McBryde obtained the degree of doctor. But that same year, already determined to trade medicine for painting, he enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury. In the summer of the following year he married Gwendolen Grotrian. Shortly after beginning his artistic studies, in 1904, James McBryde proposed to M. R. James to illustrate his ghost stories, if he decided to publish them. But James McBryde passed away in June of that year. In October, M. R. James informed Gwendolen McBryde of his intention to publish, in a print run of one hundred copies, A Chronicle of a Troll Hunt, illustrated by James McBryde and dedicated to her memory.