Edith Nesbit
This volume is a treasure-trove of rare 19th-century macabre stories for lovers of classic fantasy and horror. From ghosts of mind and spirit to paranormal experiences, from exotic Arabian Nights adventures to Deals with the Devil, each story in this volume is sure to delight the discerning reader of classic fantasy and horror.
Included are:
THE GRAY LADY, by Mary E. Lee
THE EBONY FRAME, by Edith Nesbit
THE DOOM, by Benedict
THE CURSE
...Excerpt:
"To be rich is a luxurious sensation—the more so when you have plumbed the depths of hard-up-ness as a Fleet Street hack, a picker-up of unconsidered pars, a reporter, an unappreciated journalist—all callings utterly inconsistent with one's family feeling and one's direct descent from the Dukes of Picardy."
11) Man and Maid
Excerpt:
"There was once an old, old castle--it was so old that its I walls and towers and turrets and gateways and arches had crumbled to ruins, and of all its old splendour there were only two little rooms left; and it was here that John the blacksmith had set up his forge. He was too poor to live in a proper house, and no one asked any rent for the rooms in the ruin, because all the lords of the castle were dead and gone this many
...14) In Homespun
In Homespun is a collection that was originally published in 1896, and the stories are set in the villages of South Kent and East Sussex that Nesbit knew well. Told in the first person, by a variety of strong, women characters- the sort of character E. Nesbit specialized in - looking back on their earlier lives.
A gentle tale of romance and art from a noted children's author... "He asked idle questions: she answered them with a conscientious tremulous truthfulness that showed to him as the most finished art. Betty told him nervously and in words ill-chosen everything that he asked to know, but all the while the undercurrent of questions rang strong within her -- 'When is he to teach me? Where? How?' -- so that when at last there was
...John Charrington's Wedding is a short ghost story by the British author Edith Nesbit. It was written in 1891 and is included in Nesbit's 1893 anthology Grim Tales.
The story's title character is a man who somehow always seems to get what he wants. John makes up his mind to marry May Forster, the prettiest young woman in the village. After John asks her to marry him several times, May finally agrees.
...When a young pair of newlyweds settle down into a small cottage in a quiet village, they look forward to a pleasant, pastoral life of domestic bliss The husband, a practical man, dismisses the superstitious maid's tale of an ancient curse about the local church's marble statues who come to life each year on All Saint's Eve to wreak revenge. But then, on the fateful night, he discovers that the stone slabs on which the knights rest
...Excerpt:
The policeman passed him with but a surly response to his "Good night." The bicyclists went by him like grey ghosts with fog-horns; and it was nearly ten o'clock, and she had not come.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned towards his lodgings. His road led him by her house—desirable, commodious, semi-detached—and he walked slowly as he neared it. She might, even now, be coming out. But she was not.
..."The figure of my wife came in it came straight towards the bed, its wide eyes were open and looked at me with love unspeakable."
Edith Nesbit, best known as the author of The Railway Children and other children's classics, was also the mistress of the ghost story and tales of terror. She was able to create genuinely chilling narratives in which the returning dead feature strongly.
