Nesbit, second son of Edward Planta Nesbit (q.v.), was a child prodigy. By the age of ten he had translated Goethe and Schiller into English (these were later published as Translations from the German Poets). He worked briefly in a bank then took up the law and was called to the Bar in 1873. A brilliant lawyer and legal draftsman, he was appointed Queen's Council in 1893.
He edited the North Adelaide Young Men's Society's magazines, Eclectic and Young Men's Magazine and in August 1900 he launched and initially edited the weekly newspaper Morning (later edited by J. Newton Wood as Century).
At intervals from 1885 he suffered psychotic episodes, and was obliged to spend time in so-called lunatic asylums in Victoria and South Australia. However, he continued to work and to fight for social reform, and ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1896. In his later years he suffered increasingly from melancholia, and died of a duodenal ulcer.
Nesbit published a number of pamphlets on various subjects including the Lunacy Laws, insolvency and women's suffrage.
