The Short Story Hour - Volume 4

By Edith Nesbit, Edgar Allan Poe and Kate Chopin

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories form the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.

In the Dark by Edith Nesbit

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allen Poe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miniature Masterpieces
• Release date: Jan 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787377110

Edith Nesbit

Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was an English writer of children’s literature. Born in Kennington, Nesbit was raised by her mother following the death of her father—a prominent chemist—when she was only four years old. Due to her sister Mary’s struggle with tuberculosis, the family travelled throughout England, France, Spain, and Germany for years. After Mary passed, Edith and her mother returned to England for good, eventually settling in London where, at eighteen, Edith met her future husband, a bank clerk named Hubert Bland. The two—who became prominent socialists and were founding members of the Fabian Society—had a famously difficult marriage, and both had numerous affairs. Nesbit began her career as a poet, eventually turning to children’s literature and publishing around forty novels, story collections, and picture books. A contemporary of such figures of Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame, Nesbit was notable as a writer who pioneered the children’s adventure story in fiction. Among her most popular works are The Railway Children (1906) and The Story of the Amulet (1906), the former of which was adapted into a 1970 film, and the latter of which served as a profound influence on C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. A friend and mentor to George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, Nesbit’s work has inspired and entertained generations of children and adults, including such authors as J.K. Rowling, Noël Coward, and P.L. Travers.

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The Short Story Hour. Volume 4

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have a wide and excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of this genre.  Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information. 

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In the Dark by Edith Nesbit

It may have been a form of madness. Or it may be that he really was what is called haunted. Or it may―though I don't pretend to understand how―have been the development, through intense suffering, of a sixth sense in a very nervous, highly strung nature. Something certainly led him where They were. And to him They were all one.

He told me the first part of the story, and the last part of it I saw with my own eyes.

Chapter I

Haldane and I were friends even in our school-days. What first brought us together was our common hatred of Visger, who came from our part of the country. His people knew our people at home, so he was put on to us when he came. He was the most intolerable person, boy and man, that I have ever known. He would not tell a lie. And that was all right. But he didn't stop at that. If he were asked whether any other chap had done anything―been out of bounds, or up to any sort of lark―he would always say, 'I don't know, sir, but I believe so. He never did know―we took care of that. But what he believed was always right. I remember Haldane twisting his arm to say how he knew about that cherry-tree business, and he only said, 'I don't know―I just feel sure. And I was right, you see.' What can you do with a boy like that?

We grew up to be men. At least Haldane and I did. Visger grew up to be a prig. He was a vegetarian and a teetotaller, and an all-wooler and Christian Scientist, and all the things that prigs are―but he wasn't a common prig. He knew all sorts of things that he oughtn't to have known, that he couldn't have known in any ordinary decent way. It wasn't that he found things out. He just knew them. Once, when I was very unhappy, he came into my rooms―we were all in our last year at Oxford―and talked about things I hardly knew myself. That was really why I went to India that winter. It was bad enough to be unhappy, without