Dreadful Thoughts: A Double Dose of Nesbit
After an enjoyable week spent discussing terrible slimy yokes in bunks and grimly determined brutes with small heads, we now turn our petrified gazes to Dreadful Thoughts 12 (we've reached the dirty dozen).
The singular thing about our next choice is that it's plural.1 For the first time since DT 3 we're giving hungry punters not one but two slices of tasty horror. A double-bill of prime spooky badness.
Both tales come from a poisoned pen better known for producing not-so-nasty perennial favourites like The Railway Children & Five Children and It. I "speak", of course, of E. (or Edith) Nesbit: a writer whose (memorably savage & cruel) weird tales have, alas, become almost totally over-shadowed by her output for chiddlers. A real shame, but let's save further talk of that (and other things) for the actual discussion.
Here, then, is your homework.
Stories:
a) "The Shadow"2 (pdf) [The pdf is "locked" to prevent printing, but that obstacle can easily be overcome by using this simple and natty program].
b) "Man-Size in Marble" (html), (pdf).
Discussion Opens: Monday, 27th April @ 9 p.m. (and runs for seven full days).
April 19, 2009
5 responses to Dreadful Thoughts: A Double Dose of Nesbit
Hurrah! She’s one of my favourite authors ever.
Good! I absolutely love her uncanny tales. They’re so deliciously sad and unfair!
And that nagging blackness we called “Love.”
Is it just me or does she look a whole lot like Big Gay Doug from Melrose Place?
Yes. I am that old.
Who? Yer wan at the top of the page or Edith Nesbit? Can’t quite picture Big Gay Doug – so not qualified to answer.