![]() In the context of Edith Nesbit’s life and marriage to the riapic Hubert Bland, these powerfully told tales, with their frequent sexual overtones, reflect deep-seated fears and anxieties – in particular, childhood memories of seeing mummified corpses in a Bordeaux church (‘skeletons with the flesh hardened on their bones, with their long dry hair on each side of their brown faces’) and a lifelong dread of being buried alive. This collection now makes ample amends by bringing together fourteen excellent stories culled from Grim Tales and Something Wrong (1893) and from Fear (1910), including such forgotten gems as ‘From the Dead’, ‘The Ebony Frame’, ‘The Head’, and ‘Hurst of Hurstcote’. While Edith Nesbit’s mainstream fiction has often been revived, her tales of terror – apart from one or two anthologized pieces – have fallen into unwarranted neglect. Nesbit, author of such classic books for children as The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and The Railway Children (1906). ![]() So ends one of the most famous of all English ghost stories – ‘Man-Size in Marble’ by E. In one of them she held something fast … It was a grey marble finger: ![]() ![]() I clasped her and kissed her, and called her by all her pet names, but I think I knew all the time that she was dead. ![]()
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