On Saturday we had booked tickets for an evening of Edith Nesbit's Ghost Stories, at Skipton Town Hall. Entitled Haunted Shadows: The Gothic Tales of Edith Nesbit, this was a one (wo)man show performed by A Monkey with Cymbals.
The show included three of Nesbit's lesser known tales: The Shadow, The Pavilion, and A Strange Experience. Each story is filled with suspense and horror and were guaranteed to send shivers down the spine. These tales are in sharp contrast to Nesbit's better known works including The Railway Children and Five Children and It. Until recently I was unaware of Nesbit's "dark side".
As a bonus, at the end of the performance there was a Q&A session. with actor Claire Louise Amias and publisher Raymond Russell, of Tartarus Press. They discussed Nesbit's weird tales, their significance in Gothic literature, and the inspiration behind bringing them back to life.
It was particularly pleasing to have Tartarus Press, who have recently published Nesbit's Dark Tales, on hand to answer questions. Their recent publication is absolutely gorgeous, as are all of their books. They have collected twenty-three short stories in which Nesbit explored the more macabre and sometimes downright horrific side of her imagination. From the Gothic A Strange Experience (1884) and the classic Man-Size in Marble (1887), through to The Detective (1920) written almost four decades later, Nesbit turned time and time again to the supernatural. Her life-long fascination for ghosts and spectres appears to have been a direct result of her own childhood experiences, and these are discussed in a new Introduction to this volume of her collected Dark Tales.
An absolutley fascinating evening, which inspired me to read more of Nesbit's "weird and dark" tales.