This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information. This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey. Edith Nesbit – The Ghost Stories Edith Nesbit is more famously known as a writer of children’s stories, such as The Railway Children. But in this volume we explore her short stories of the macabre and ghostly sort. Born in 1858 in Kennington, then part of Surrey, her early life was one of constantly moving homes before meeting, age 17, Hubert Bland who she was to marry three years later – whilst 7 months pregnant. Bland kept his affair with another woman going throughout their marriage and the two children from that union were raised by Edith as her own, together with their own three. After the death of their youngest child at age 15 they founded the Fabian Society in 1884 in his honour. Thought of as the first modern writer for children she also wrote for adults producing over 50 books in total.
Author
Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) was an English author and poet; she published her books for children under the name of E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later connected to the Labour Party. Edith Nesbit was born in Kennington, Surrey, the daughter of agricultural chemist and schoolmaster John Collis Nesbit. The death of her father when she was four and the continuing ill health of her sister meant that Nesbit had a transitory childhood, her family moving across Europe in search of healthy climates only to return to England for financial reasons. Nesbit therefore spent her childhood attaining an education from whatever sources were available—local grammars, the occasional boarding school but mainly through reading. At 17 her family finally settled in London and aged 19, Nesbit met Hubert Bland, a political activist and writer. They became lovers and when Nesbit found she was pregnant they became engaged, marrying in April 1880. After this scandalous (for Victorian society) beginning, the marriage would be an unconventional one. Initially, the couple lived separately—Nesbit with her family and Bland with his mother and her live-in companion Maggie Doran. Initially, Edith Nesbit books were novels meant for adults, including The Prophet's Mantle (1885) and The Marden Mystery (1896) about the early days of the socialist movement. Written under the pen name of her third child 'Fabian Bland', these books were not successful. Nesbit generated an income for the family by lecturing around the country on socialism and through her journalism (she was editor of the Fabian Society's journal, Today). In 1899 she had published The Adventures of the Treasure Seekers to great acclaim.
