How can you not love a writer described, by a contemporary, thus: "Mrs. Bland — E. Nesbit — the popular author of "The Would-Be-Good," was always surrounded by adoring young men, dazzled by her vitality, amazing talent and the sheer magnificence of her appearance. She was a very tall woman, built on the grand scale, and on festive occasions wore a trailing gown of peacock blue satin with strings of beads and Indian bangles from wrist to elbow. Madame, as she was always called, smoked incessantly, and her long cigarette holder became an indissoluble part of the picture she suggested–a raffish Rossetti, with a long full throat, and dark luxuriant hair, smoothly parted. She was a wonderful woman, large hearted, amazingly unconventional, but with sudden strange reversions to ultra-respectable standards. Her children’s stories had an immense vogue, and she could write unconcernedly in the midst of a crowd, smoking like a chimney all the while." [Mark Gaipa, The New Age Modernist Journals Project, Brown U]

Part of the PBS website for the 2000 Masterpiece Theatre production of Nesbit's classic The Railway Children. [Louise Valleau]

[Spartacus Educational]

[Penguin Group]

[Wikipedia]

By none other than Gore Vidal, this essay, from a 1964 issue of The New York Review of Books, does not discuss Nesbit's supernatural fiction but has valuable things to say about her many fantasy-tinged works.

Part of the The Victorian Literary Studies Archive, this concordance allows you to search etexts of Nesbit's works.

Supernaturalist bibliography with book cover images. [Guide to Supernatural Fiction, Tartarus Press]

[Fantastic Fiction]

[Online Books]

A horror tale that explores the idea of hypnotism reaching across the boundary between life and death -- a theme explored by Edgar Allan Poe in "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar."

Nesbit's late-Victorian take on the "spectre bridegroom" motif, with interesting side glimpses at issues of wealth and class and duty -- ideals beloved of the Victorians.

Like waxworks? You may not, after you read this story. A study of the power of fear, and thus reflective of late-Victorian interest in psychology, this tale compares very nicely to H. G. Wells' "The Red Room."