Product Description

'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. Sadly, these stories have been neglected for many years, but now, at last, they are back in print. In this wonderful collection of eerie, flesh-creeping yarns, we encounter love that transcends the grave, reanimated corpses, vampiric vines, vengeful ghosts and other dark delights to make you feel fearful. These vintage spooky stories, tinged with horror, are told in a bold, forthright manner that makes them seem as fresh and unsettling as today's headlines.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88978 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Part of Wordsworth's Mystery & Supernatural series, featuring classic spine chilling tales, some previously unavailable for many years.

Customer Reviews

Not for children
Edith Nesbit might be known as a children's author, but this selection is definitely not for the young or easily scared. The collection contains anthology stand-bys "Man Size in Marble" and "John Charrington's Wedding"- justly well-known classics, but for me "From the Dead" and, my personal favourite "The Pavilion" are even better. These four stories alone justify a five star review. The rest vary from the good to the merely competent.

"Tales of Terror," did you say?
In response to editor David Stuart Davies' claim that, "Among aficionados of ghost stories, Edith nesbit is a highly-regarded exponent of the genre," I can only say that, on the strength of this collection, I am one such aficionado who certainly could not so regard her.

In fact, I find it difficult to believe that any averagely-literate, modern reader would not imagine these stories to have started published life in romantic, Victorian schoolgirls' periodicals (if there were such things). I found them singularly dated and ungripping and only persisted in reading them to the end, in the hope that I might find at least one of real quality. Probably "Man-Size in Marble" and "John Charrington's Wedding" are about as good as they get, which is doubtless why they are the only Nesbit ghost stories I have ever come across before, in other anthologies.

Overall, then, with the best will in the world, I found it all too easy to understand the low opinion that Nesbit's biographers have apparently had of her supernatural fiction. You may find, if you are like the litcrit quoted by Davies in his introduction, that her work "...is redeemed by its emotional sensitivity, its alienated female perspective, etc." If, however, you are like me, what you will not find is that it is redeemed by any real capacity to make your flesh creep, notwithstanding the publisher's hype on the back of the book.

What reading these stories may do for you, as it did for me, is to emphasise the clear superiority of M R James - a contemporary of Edith Nesbit - in the field of popular English supernatural fiction.