A Sweet Sinner

Hume Nisbet (1849-1923) was a Scottish-Australian novelist and painter. Born James Hume Nisbet in Stirling, Scotland, he was educated by Rev. Dr. Culross and received artistic training from a young age. At 16, he traveled to Australia and spent the next seven years painting, writing, and sketching in such places as Tasmania, New Zealand, and the islands of the South Sea. After studying theatre under acclaimed actor Richard Stewart in Melbourne, Nisbet returned to London in 1872 to pursue a career in painting. Although he found some success as art master of Edinburgh’s Watt Institution and School of Art, producing such well-regarded paintings as “The Flying Dutchman” and “The Battle of Dunbar,” Nisbet was more widely known for his extensive literary output. Nisbet published around two dozen novels and several poetry collections in his career, many of which were set in Australia. He is mostly remembered for his collections of ghost stories, including Stories Weird and Wonderful (1900) and The Haunted Station and Other Stories (1894).