A wonderfully odd little Edwardian golfing ghost story.

If you can believe it, it's part sporting satire, part supernatural comedy, part period curio. Many parts. First published in 1902, The Haunted Major follows the pompous Major Jack Overtopp, whose world of clubs, wagers, status and competitive vanity begins to unravel under decidedly spectral pressure.

Robert Marshall uses golf to reflect social theatre, with the Major’s self-importance, masculine ceremony and appetite for prestige becoming the real target. The book’s great charm is the collision between respectable sporting fiction and the ridiculous intrusion of the uncanny: ghosts, bad luck, vanity and the possibility that the universe has taken a personal dislike to your handicap. Harry Furniss’s original illustrations sharpen the caricature, giving the whole thing the feel of a lost comic relic from the strange prehistory of golf literature.

Scottish Academic Press / Xetro, Edinburgh, 1983. Reprint of the revised 1973 edition. Hardback. Light age toning and shelf wear, with some minor rubbing and handling marks to covers. Internally clean, binding sound. Very good condition for age.