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    The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit
    The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit
    The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit

    By Edith Nesbit

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    The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit. The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Edith Nesbit. Edith Nesbit is more famously known as a writer of children’s stories (stories some of which are available in our other volumes). But in this volume we explore her short stories. And they bring out a very different side of her imagination. For a start they are dark in nature, short in length. They brim with atmosphere around characters that could be our neighbours. And they almost always end with a fright. Born in 1858 in Kennington, then part of Surrey and now London. Her early life was one of constant house changes before meeting, age 17, Hubert Bland who she was to marry three years later – whilst she was 7 months pregnant. Additionally Bland kept his affair with another woman going throughout. The two children of this relationship were raised by Edith as her own as well as their own three. They founded the Fabian Society in 1884 naming one of their sons Fabian in its honour. Together they edited the Society's journal; Today. Edith was an active lecturer and prolific writer on socialism during the 1880s and co-wrote with her husband under the name "Fabian Bland", though this activity dwindled with her mounting success as a children's author grew. Several members of the Fabian Society founded the London School Of Economics where she was often a guest lecturer. Edith Nesbit lived from 1899 to 1920 in Well Hall House, Eltham, Kent, which appears in fictional guise in several of her books. On 20 February 1917, some three years after Bland died, Nesbit married Thomas "the Skipper" Tucker. They were married in Woolwich, where he was a ship's engineer on the Woolwich Ferry. Towards the end of her life she moved to a house called "Crowlink" in Friston, East Sussex, and later to "The Long Boat" at Jesson, St Mary's Bay, New Romney, East Kent where, suffering from lung cancer, she died in 1924 and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary in the Marsh. Thought of as the first modern writer for children she also wrote for adults producing over 50 books in total. Like many consummate writers she mastered many areas of writing and in this we include her Poetry and her short stories. Some of these stories are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Word Of Mouth. Many samples are at our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee The full volume can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores and read for you by Richard Mitchley.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateSep 24, 2013
    ISBN9781780005973
    The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit
    Author

    Edith Nesbit

    Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was an English writer of children’s literature. Born in Kennington, Nesbit was raised by her mother following the death of her father—a prominent chemist—when she was only four years old. Due to her sister Mary’s struggle with tuberculosis, the family travelled throughout England, France, Spain, and Germany for years. After Mary passed, Edith and her mother returned to England for good, eventually settling in London where, at eighteen, Edith met her future husband, a bank clerk named Hubert Bland. The two—who became prominent socialists and were founding members of the Fabian Society—had a famously difficult marriage, and both had numerous affairs. Nesbit began her career as a poet, eventually turning to children’s literature and publishing around forty novels, story collections, and picture books. A contemporary of such figures of Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame, Nesbit was notable as a writer who pioneered the children’s adventure story in fiction. Among her most popular works are The Railway Children (1906) and The Story of the Amulet (1906), the former of which was adapted into a 1970 film, and the latter of which served as a profound influence on C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. A friend and mentor to George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, Nesbit’s work has inspired and entertained generations of children and adults, including such authors as J.K. Rowling, Noël Coward, and P.L. Travers.

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      Book preview

      The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit - Edith Nesbit

      The Short Stories Of Edith Nesbit

      The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel.  But it is an art in itself.  To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task.  Many try and many fail. 

      In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers.  Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say.  In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Edith Nesbit.

      Edith Nesbit is more famously known as a writer of children’s stories (stories some of which are available in our other volumes).   But in this volume we explore her short stories. And they bring out a very different side of her imagination.  For a start they are dark in nature, short in length. They brim with atmosphere around characters that could be our neighbours. And they almost always end with a fright. 

      Born in 1858 in Kennington, then part of Surrey and now London. Her early life was one of constant house changes before meeting, age 17, Hubert Bland who she was to marry three years later – whilst she was 7 months pregnant. Additionally Bland kept his affair with another woman going throughout. The two children of this relationship were raised by Edith as her own as well as their own three.

      They founded the Fabian Society in 1884 naming one of their sons Fabian in its honour.  Together they edited the Society's journal; Today.  Edith was an active lecturer and prolific writer on socialism during the 1880s and co-wrote with her husband under the name Fabian Bland, though this activity dwindled with her mounting success as a children's author grew.  Several members of the Fabian Society founded the London School Of Economics where she was often a guest lecturer.

      Edith Nesbit lived from 1899 to 1920 in Well Hall House, Eltham, Kent, which appears in fictional guise in several of her books.

      On 20 February 1917, some three years after Bland died, Nesbit married Thomas the Skipper Tucker. They were married in Woolwich, where he was a ship's engineer on the Woolwich Ferry.

      Towards the end of her life she moved to a house called Crowlink in Friston, East Sussex, and later to The Long Boat at Jesson, St Mary's Bay, New Romney, East Kent where, suffering from lung cancer, she died in 1924 and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary in the Marsh.

      Thought of as the first modern writer for children she also wrote for adults producing over 50 books in total. Like many consummate writers she mastered many areas of writing and in this we include her Poetry and her short stories.

      Some of these stories are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Word Of Mouth.  Many samples are at our youtube channel   http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee   The full volume can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores and read for you by Richard Mitchley

      Index Of Stories

      Man Size In Marble

      Uncle Abraham’s Romance

      The Ebony frame

      One Way Of Love

      The Power Of Darkness

      John Carrington’s Wedding

      Man Size In Marble

      I never in my life knew what it was to have as much money as I required to supply the most ordinary needs, good colours, books, and cab-fares, and when we were married we knew quite well that we should only be able to live at all by strict punctuality and attention to business. I used to paint in those days, and Laura used to write, and we felt sure we could keep the pot at least simmering. Living in town was out of the question, so we went to look for a cottage in the country, which should be at once sanitary and picturesque. So rarely do these two qualities meet in one cottage that our search was for some time quite fruitless. We tried advertisements, but most of the desirable rural residences which we did look at proved to be lacking in both essentials, and when a cottage chanced to have drains it always had stucco as well and was shaped like a tea-caddy. And if we found a vine or rose-covered porch, corruption invariably lurked within. Our minds got so befogged by the eloquence of house-agents and the rival disadvantages of the fever-traps and outrages to beauty which we had seen and scorned, that I very much doubt whether either of us, on our wedding morning, knew the difference between a house and a haystack. But when we got away from friends and house-agents, on our honeymoon, our wits grew clear again, and we knew a pretty cottage when at last we saw one. It was at Brenzett, a little village set on a hill over against the southern marshes. We had gone there, from the seaside village where we were staying, to see the church, and two fields from the church we found this cottage. It stood quite by itself, about two miles from the village. It was a long, low building, with rooms sticking out in unexpected places. There was a bit of stone-work, ivy-covered and moss-grown, just two old rooms, all that was left of a big house that had once stood there and round this stone-work the house had grown up. Stripped of its roses and jasmine it would have been hideous. As it stood it was charming, and after a brief examination we took it. It was absurdly cheap. The rest of our honeymoon we spent in grubbing about in second-hand shops in the county town, picking up bits of old oak and Chippendale chairs for our furnishing. We wound up with a run up to town and a visit to Liberty's, and soon the low oak-beamed lattice-windowed rooms began to be home. There was a jolly old-fashioned garden, with grass paths, and no end of hollyhocks and sunflowers, and big lilies. From the window you could see the marsh-pastures, and beyond them the blue, thin line of the sea. We were as happy as the summer was glorious, and settled down into work sooner than we ourselves expected. I was never tired of sketching the view and the wonderful cloud effects from the open lattice, and Laura would sit at the table and write verses about them, in which I mostly played the part of foreground.

      We got a tall old peasant woman to do for us. Her face and figure were good, though

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