Grim Tales

Grim Tales is a number of tender stories that take the children into that hidden world where fright is just close, and where love can move beyond the barriers of demise. The collection consists of chapters on The Ebony Frame; John Charrington's Wedding; Uncle Abraham's Romance; The Mystery of the Semi-Detached; From the Dead - part 1; From the Dead - part 2; From the Dead - part 3; Man-size in Marble; The Mass for the Dead. Edith Nesbit was an English writer and poet. She wrote her children’s books with the name of E. Nesbit. She was also a political activist and a co-founder of the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later associated to the Labour Party. She wrote about 40 children’s fiction, which include novels, collections of stories and picture books. She co-authored with others, writing around so much more. In her biography by Julia Briggs, Nesbit was "the first modern writer for children": Nesbit "helped to reverse the great tradition of children's literature inaugurated by Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald and Kenneth Grahame, in turning away from their secondary worlds to the tough truths to be won from encounters with things-as-they-are, previously the province of adult novels." Briggs also tributes Nesbit with having produced the children's fiction. Noël Coward was a huge fan of hers and, in a letter to an early biographer Noel Streatfeild, stated "she had an economy of phrase, and an unparalleled talent for evoking hot summer days in the English countryside." Some of her renowned books are The Story of the Treasure Seekers and The Wouldbegoods, which both retell the stories of the Bastables, a middle class family that fell down on difficulties. The Railway Children is also popular for its 1970 film adaptation. Gore Vidal described The Story of the Amulet as one in which "Nesbit's powers of invention are at their best."