Nisbet, Hume
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, Artist.
(1849-1923) Scottish actor, painter, teacher and author, intermittently in Australia from 1865 – where much of his non-fantastic fiction is set – though he spent most of his life in England. He wrote at least forty-five novels, some of which are fantasy or sf, beginning with Ashes: A Tale of Two Spheres (1890; vt Wasted Fires 1902), a rather metaphysical assault on the world of publishing, set in an imaginary city morally contaminated by an art editor who incarnates Baal-Moloch; and "Bail Up!": A Romance of Bushrangers and Blacks (1890), which involves astral projection and a moderately sympathetic Yellow Peril figure. (Nisbet's sympathy with natives may be limited in modern terms, but his depiction of the aborigine as oppressed, in this and later tales, aroused considerable resentment in nineteenth-century Australia.) Later novels variously Equipoise between fantasy and sf: The "Jolly Roger": A Story of Sea Heroes and Pirates (1891) features a supernatural wind, mass Hypnotism, and a hidden pirate Island; in Valdmer the Viking: A Romance of the Eleventh Century by Sea and Land (1893) Vikings are taken to Tule, a technologically superior Lost World in the Arctic north of North America, which they manage to destroy; A Desert Bride: A Story of Adventure in India and Persia (1894) locates its Lost World in India; in The Great Secret: A Tale of Tomorrow (1895), a Mad Scientist leads a crew of vicious anarchists to an Underground cavern where dead spirits of the famous, reminiscent of figures in John Kendrick Bangs's Houseboat sequence, converse with the living, super-Weapons are encountered, and an excursion is mounted to Atlantis Under the Sea; The Quest of the Golden Pearl (1897) is another Lost World tale set on a holy Island near Ceylon; The Empire Makers: A Romance of Adventure and War in South Africa (1900) sets its Lost World in South Africa. Much of Nisbet's work is scarred by crassness and commercial opportunism, but flashes of political and personal insight can be found throughout. [JC]
James Hume Nisbet
born Stirling, Scotland: 8 August 1849
died Eastbourne, Sussex: 4 June 1923
works
- Doctor Bernard St. Vincent: A Sensational Romance of Sydney (London: Ward and Downey, 1889) [pb/]
- Ashes: A Tale of Two Spheres (London: Authors' Co-operative Publishing Co, 1890) [hb/]
- Wasted Fires (London: Methuen and Co, 1902) [vt of the above: hb/]
- "Bail Up!": A Romance of Bushrangers and Blacks (London: Chatto and Windus, 1890) [hb/]
- The Black Drop (London: Trischler and Co, 1891) [hb/]
- The "Jolly Roger": A Story of Sea Heroes and Pirates (London: Digby, Long, 1891) [hb/]
- Valdmer the Viking: A Romance of the Eleventh Century by Sea and Land (London: Hutchinson, 1893) [illus/Hume Nisbet: hb/]
- A Desert Bride: A Story of Adventure in India and Persia (London: F V White and Co, 1894) [illus/Hume Nisbet: hb/]
- The Great Secret: A Tale of Tomorrow (London: F V White and Co, 1895) [hb/]
- Kings of the Sea: A Story of the Spanish Main (London: F V White and Co, 1896) [hb/]
- The Quest of the Golden Pearl (London: Ward and Downey, 1897) [hb/Hume Nisbet]
- Paths of the Dead: A Romance of the Present Day (London: John Long, 1899) [hb/]
- The Empire Makers: A Romance of Adventure and War in South Africa (London: F V White and Co, 1900) [hb/]
- Children of Hermes (London: Hurst, 1901) [hb/]
- A Crafty Foe: Romance of the Sea (London: F V White and Co, 1901) [hb/]
- A Colonial King (London: F V White and Co, 1905) [hb/]
collections and stories
- The Haunted Station, and Other Stories (London: F V White and Co, 1893) [coll: hb/]
- The Haunted Station (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: Mulini Press, 1997) [story: chap: title story of the above: #4 in series Small Tales of Early Australia: pb/nonpictorial]
- Stories Weird and Wonderful: Hume Nisbet's Christmas Annual 1900 (London: F V White and Co, 1900) [coll: a sixpenny paperback: pb/]
- Mistletoe Manor (London: John Long, 1902) [coll: hb/]
links
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