The Power of Darkness - Tales of Terror
Oct. 24th, 2010 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
Edith Nesbit is best known as a Victorian author of children's stories, most notably The Railway Children. She was also one of the most interesting writers of ghost stories and gothic tales of her day.
For those who imagine the Victorian to be have been terribly strait-laced Nesbit’s own biography will come as something of a shock. For some years she lived in a ménage à trois with her husband and her husband’s mistress.
Wordsworth Editions’ collection The Power of Darkness - Tales of Terror illustrates both the quality and the variety of her horror writing.
There are some misfires, but that’s mostly because she was always willing to try something a little different. There are several attempts to combine horror with romance, or to give a horror story a slightly whimsical twist. For me they don’t quite come off, especially tales like The Haunted Inheritance.
But that’s a minor quibble. Most of her stories do work, and many are surprisingly dark and twisted with a very real touch of weirdness. There’s even a science fiction story, The Three Drugs, which is very successful. In fact although Nesbit certainly wrote ghost stories she rarely wrote a completely conventional one and in general she exhibited a delightful disregard for genre.
Highly recommended.
dfordoom)Edith Nesbit is best known as a Victorian author of children's stories, most notably The Railway Children. She was also one of the most interesting writers of ghost stories and gothic tales of her day.
For those who imagine the Victorian to be have been terribly strait-laced Nesbit’s own biography will come as something of a shock. For some years she lived in a ménage à trois with her husband and her husband’s mistress.
Wordsworth Editions’ collection The Power of Darkness - Tales of Terror illustrates both the quality and the variety of her horror writing.
There are some misfires, but that’s mostly because she was always willing to try something a little different. There are several attempts to combine horror with romance, or to give a horror story a slightly whimsical twist. For me they don’t quite come off, especially tales like The Haunted Inheritance.
But that’s a minor quibble. Most of her stories do work, and many are surprisingly dark and twisted with a very real touch of weirdness. There’s even a science fiction story, The Three Drugs, which is very successful. In fact although Nesbit certainly wrote ghost stories she rarely wrote a completely conventional one and in general she exhibited a delightful disregard for genre.
Highly recommended.
