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Feb. 20th, 2008 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY pgmcc)
I have been reading Edith Nesbit's The Power of Darkness; Tales of Terror for some time and finished it last night. (Long elapse time due to only reading it now and again.)
I really enjoyed it.
The stories are a mixture of supernatural, and psychological horror. There are also some tales of horror due to the actions of one human on another.
Some of the tales are a bit predictable, but most take you on a journey of the stricken mind, and the personal demons.
Edith Nesbit had a great way of putting things that is very quaint and of its time. She captures the essence of the social mores of the period in which her tales are set. I particularly liked the opening of The Head:
When your personal appearance is best described by the enumeration of your clothes, your character by the trade mark on the gilt waistband of your cigar, and your profession "just anything that comes along, don't you know", you are not exactly the right man in the right place, when you find yourself up to your knees in mud, your carriage with a wheel off lying prone in a ditch...
Another interest social commentary was in the second paragraph of The Pavilion.
Ernestine was a prettyish girl with the airs, so irresistible and misleading, of a beauty; most people said that she was beautiful, and she certainly managed, with extraordinary success, to produce the illusion of Beauty. Quite a number of plainish girls achieve that effect nowadays.
That last paragraph was so reminiscent of Wilde at his best.
pgmcc)I have been reading Edith Nesbit's The Power of Darkness; Tales of Terror for some time and finished it last night. (Long elapse time due to only reading it now and again.)
I really enjoyed it.
The stories are a mixture of supernatural, and psychological horror. There are also some tales of horror due to the actions of one human on another.
Some of the tales are a bit predictable, but most take you on a journey of the stricken mind, and the personal demons.
Edith Nesbit had a great way of putting things that is very quaint and of its time. She captures the essence of the social mores of the period in which her tales are set. I particularly liked the opening of The Head:
When your personal appearance is best described by the enumeration of your clothes, your character by the trade mark on the gilt waistband of your cigar, and your profession "just anything that comes along, don't you know", you are not exactly the right man in the right place, when you find yourself up to your knees in mud, your carriage with a wheel off lying prone in a ditch...
Another interest social commentary was in the second paragraph of The Pavilion.
Ernestine was a prettyish girl with the airs, so irresistible and misleading, of a beauty; most people said that she was beautiful, and she certainly managed, with extraordinary success, to produce the illusion of Beauty. Quite a number of plainish girls achieve that effect nowadays.
That last paragraph was so reminiscent of Wilde at his best.
