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Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) was an English writer and poet, who published her books for children as E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on more than 60 such books. She was also a political activist and co-founder of the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later affiliated to the Labour Party.
Edith Nesbit | |
|---|---|
 Nesbit, c. 1890 | |
| Born | 15 August 1858 Kennington, Surrey (now Greater London), England[1] |
| Died | 4 May 1924 (aged 65) New Romney, Kent, England |
| Pen name | E. Nesbit |
| Occupation | Writer, poet |
| Period | 1886–1924 |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Notable works | |
| Spouse | Thomas Tucker (m. 1917) |
Nesbit was born in 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane, Kennington, Surrey (now classified as Inner London),[a] the daughter of an agricultural chemist, John Collis Nesbit, who died in March 1862, before her fourth birthday. Her mother was Sarah Green (née Alderton).[2]
The ill health of Edith's sister Mary meant that the family travelled for some years, living variously in Brighton, Buckinghamshire, France (Dieppe, Rouen, Paris, Tours, Poitiers, Angoulême, Bordeaux, Arcachon, Pau, Bagnères-de-Bigorre, and Dinan in Brittany), Spain and Germany. Mary was engaged in 1871 to the poet Philip Bourke Marston, but later that year she died of tuberculosis in Normandy.[3]
After Mary's death, Edith and her mother settled for three years at Halstead Hall, Halstead, north-west Kent, a location that inspired The Railway Children, although the distinction has also been claimed by the Derbyshire town of New Mills.[4]
When Nesbit was 17, the family moved back to Lewisham in south-east London. There is a Lewisham Council plaque to her at 28 Elswick Road.[5]
In 1877, at the age of 18, Nesbit met the bank clerk Hubert Bland, her elder by three years. Seven months pregnant, she married Bland on 22 April 1880, but did not initially live with him, as Bland remained with his mother. Their marriage was tumultuous. Early on, Nesbit found that another woman, Maggie Doran, who lived with his mother, believed she was Hubert's fiancée and had also borne him a child. Nesbit's children by Bland were Paul Cyril Bland (1880–1940), to whom The Railway Children was dedicated, Mary Iris Bland (1881–1965), who married John Austin D Phillips in 1907,[6] and Fabian Bland (1885–1900).
A more serious blow came in 1886, when she discovered that her friend Alice Hoatson was pregnant by him. She had previously agreed to adopt Hoatson's child and allow Hoatson to live with her as their housekeeper. After she discovered the truth, she and her husband quarrelled violently and she suggested that Hoatson and the baby, Rosamund, should leave; her husband threatened to leave Edith if she disowned the baby and its mother. Hoatson remained with them as a housekeeper and secretary and became pregnant by Bland again 13 years later. Edith again adopted Hoatson's child, John.[7] Bland's two children by Alice Hoatson, whom Edith adopted, were Rosamund Edith Nesbit Hamilton, later Bland (1886–1950), who married Clifford Dyer Sharp on 16 October 1909,[8] and to whom The Book of Dragons was dedicated, and John Oliver Wentworth Bland (1899–1946) to whom The House of Arden and Five Children and It were dedicated.[9][10] Nesbit's son Fabian died aged 15 after a tonsil operation; Nesbit dedicated several books to him, including The Story of the Treasure Seekers and its sequels. Nesbit's adopted daughter Rosamund collaborated with her on Cat Tales.
Nesbit admired the artist and Marxian socialist William Morris.[11][12] The couple joined the founders of the Fabian Society in 1884,[13] after which their son Fabian was named,[14] and jointly edited its journal Today. Hoatson was its assistant secretary. Nesbit and Bland dallied with the Social Democratic Federation, but found it too radical. Nesbit was a prolific lecturer and writer on socialism in the 1880s. She and her husband co-wrote under the pseudonym "Fabian Bland",[15] However, the joint work dwindled as her success rose as a children's author. She was a guest speaker at the London School of Economics, which had been founded by other Fabian Society members.
Edith lived from 1899 to 1920 at Well Hall, Eltham, in south-east London,[16] which makes fictional appearances in several of her books, such as The Red House. From 1911 she kept a second home on the Sussex Downs at Crowlink, Friston, East Sussex.[17] She and her husband entertained many friends, colleagues and admirers at Well Hall.[18]
On 20 February 1917, some three years after Bland died, Nesbit married Thomas "the Skipper" Tucker in Woolwich, where he was captain of the Woolwich Ferry.
Towards the end of her life, Nesbit moved first to Crowlink, then with the Skipper to two conjoined properties which were Royal Flying Corps buildings, 'Jolly Boat' and 'Long Boat'. Nesbit lived in 'Jolly Boat' and the Skipper in 'Long Boat'. Nesbit died in 'The Long Boat' at Jesson, St Mary's Bay, New Romney, Kent, in 1924, probably from lung cancer (she "smoked incessantly"),[19] and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary in the Marsh. Her husband Thomas died at the same address on 17 May 1935. Edith's son Paul Bland was an executor of Thomas Tucker's will.
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Nesbit's first published works were poems. She was under 20 in March 1878, when the monthly magazine Good Words printed her poem "Under the Trees".[20] In all she published about 40 books for children, including novels, storybooks and picture books.[21] Works of William Shakespeare adapted by her for children have been translated.[22] She also published almost as many books jointly with others.
Nesbit's biographer, Julia Briggs, names her "the first modern writer for children", who "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".[23] Briggs also credits Nesbit with inventing the children's adventure story.[24] Noël Coward was an admirer. In a letter to an early biographer, Noel Streatfeild wrote, "She had an economy of phrase and an unparalleled talent for evoking hot summer days in the English countryside."[25]
Among Nesbit's best-known books are The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and The Wouldbegoods (1901), which tell of the Bastables, a middle-class family fallen on relatively hard times. The Railway Children is also popularised by a 1970 film version. Gore Vidal called the time-travel book, The Story of the Amulet, one where "Nesbit's powers of invention are at their best."[26] Her children's writing also included plays and collections of verse.
Nesbit has been cited as the creator of modern children's fantasy.[27] Her innovations placed realistic contemporary children in real-world settings with magical objects (which would now be classed as contemporary fantasy) and adventures and sometimes travel to fantastic worlds.[28] This influenced directly or indirectly many later writers, including P. L. Travers (of Mary Poppins), Edward Eager, Diana Wynne Jones and J. K. Rowling. C. S. Lewis too paid heed to her in the Narnia series[29] and mentions the Bastable children in The Magician's Nephew. Michael Moorcock later wrote a series of steampunk novels around an adult Oswald Bastable of The Treasure Seekers. In 2012, Jacqueline Wilson wrote a sequel to the Psammead trilogy: Four Children and It.
Nesbit also wrote for adults, including eleven novels, short stories, and four collections of horror stories.
In 2011, Nesbit was accused of plagiarising the plot of The Railway Children from The House by the Railway by Ada J. Graves. The Telegraph reported that the Graves book had appeared in 1896, nine years before The Railway Children, and listed similarities between them.[30] However, not all sources agree on this finding:[31] The magazine Tor.com posited an error in the earlier news reports, saying both books had been released in the same year, 1906.[32]
Although she was the family breadwinner and has the father in The Railway Children declare that "Girls are just as clever as boys, and don’t you forget it!", she did not champion women's rights. "She opposed the cause of women’s suffrage—mainly, she claimed, because women could swing Tory, thus harming the Socialist cause."[33] She is said to have avoided the literary moralizing that characterized the age. "And, most crucially, both books are constructed from a blueprint that is also a kind of reënactment of the author’s own childhood: an idyll torn up at its roots by the exigencies of illness, loss, and grief."[33]
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Places
- Edith Nesbit Walk and cycleway runs along the south side of Well Hall Pleasaunce in Eltham.[34]
- Lee Green, also in south-east London, has Edith Nesbit Gardens.[35]
- A 200-metre footpath in Grove Park south-east London, between Baring Road and Reigate Road, is named Railway Children Walk after the novel,[36] as is one in Oxenhope, a film location on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway used in the 1970 film.[37]
- There is a Nesbit Road in St Mary's Bay, Romney Marsh, where Nesbit's home Long Boat & Jolly Boat stands.[38]
- Nesbit House, a care home at Badgers Mount, Kent, is located near Halstead Hall where Edith Nesbit lived when she was young.[39]
Other legacy
- Actress Judy Parfitt portrayed Nesbit in the 1972–1973 miniseries The Edwardians[40]
- The Edith Nesbit Society was founded in 1996 with Dame Jacqueline Wilson as president.[41]
- In The Guardian in 2001, Francis Spufford placed The Story of the Amulet first on his list of greatest children's books.[42]
- A. S. Byatt's 2009 novel The Children's Book is inspired partly by Nesbit, who appears as a character along with Kenneth Grahame and J. M. Barrie.[43]
- Nesbit's life inspired a one-act, one-woman play, Larks and Magic, by Alison Neil, in 2018.[44][45][46]
- Several of Nesbit's horror short stories were adapted into the anthology play The Shadow in the Dark by Oliver Giggins and Ash Pryce, which also drew on elements of Nesbit's own life and fears taken from her autobiographical writings. The show premiered at the Edinburgh Horror Festival in 2023.[47]
- American children's book author Edward Eager considered Nesbit the best children's author of all time; his books have been compared to Nesbit's and his characters are often fans of her work.[48]
- Woman of Marble, the Christmas Eve 2024 episode of the BBC's 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' strand, is an adaptation of Nesbit's horror story Man-Size in Marble. The film, written and directed by Mark Gatiss, features Celia Imrie as Nesbit.
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Asiisode of the BBC's 'A Ghost Story for Christmas'de from her autobiographical Long Ago When I was Young (published 1966), Nesbit has been the subject of five biographies.
- Doris Langley Moore E. Nesbit, 1933
- Noel Streatfeild, Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and her Children’s Books, 1958
- Julia Briggs, A Woman of Passion, 1987
- Elisabeth Galvin, The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit, 2018
- Eleanor Fitzsimons, The Life and Loves of E Nesbit, 2019[49]
Novels for children
Bastable series
- 1899 The Story of the Treasure Seekers
- 1901 The Wouldbegoods
- 1904 New Treasure Seekers
The Complete History of the Bastable Family (1928) is a posthumous omnibus of the three Bastable novels, but not the complete history. Four more stories about it appear in the 1905 Oswald Bastable and Others.[1] The Bastables also feature in the 1902 adult novel The Red House.
Psammead series
House of Arden series
- 1908 The House of Arden
- 1909 Harding's Luck
Other children's novels
- 1906 The Railway Children
- 1907 The Enchanted Castle
- 1910 The Magic City
- 1911 The Wonderful Garden
- 1913 Wet Magic
- 1925 The novella Five of Us—and Madeline, published posthumously in a collection of that name[50]
Novels for adults
As Fabian Bland:[51]
- The Prophet's Mantle. Serialised, Weekly Dispatch, 3 August–14 December 1884, published 1889
- The Hour before Day. Serialised, Weekly Dispatch, 1885
- Something Wrong. Serialised, Weekly Dispatch, 7 March to 4 July 1886
- The Marden Mystery (1896)[52] (rare: few if any copies survive)[53]
As E Nesbit
- 1893 Her Marriage Lines. Serialised, Weekly Dispatch, 1893
- 1898 The Secret of Kyriels (rare: few copies survive)[53]
- 1902 The Red House
- 1906 The Incomplete Amorist
- 1909 Salome and the Head (also known as The House with No Address)[1]
- 1909 Daphne in Fitzroy Street
- 1911 Dormant (US title, Rose Royal)
- 1916 The Incredible Honeymoon
- 1922 The Lark
Stories and storybooks for children
- 1887 The Pixies Garden
- 1891 "The Pilot", poem, picture book(?), OCLC 905335060
- 1892 Father Christmas: The Children's Casket of Pictures
- 1894 Miss Mischief
- 1895 Tick Tock, Tales of the Clock
- 1895 Pussy cat
- 1895 Doggy Tales
- 1896 The Prince, Two Mice and Some Kitchen-Maids. Father Christmas: The Children's Treasury of Pictures and Stories (1892)
- 1897 The Children's Shakespeare
- 1897 Royal Children of English History
- 1897 Tales Told in the Twilight (bedtime stories by several writers)
- 1898 The Book of Dogs
- 1899 Pussy and Doggy Tales
- 1901 The Book of Dragons (stories that appeared in The Strand, 1899)[b]
- 1901 Nine Unlikely Tales
- 1902 The Revolt of the Toys
- 1903 The Rainbow Queen and Other Stories
- 1903 Playtime Stories
- 1904 The Story of Five Rebellious Dolls
- 1904 Cat Tales (by Nesbit and her daughter Rosamund E. Nesbit Bland)[55]
- 1905 Oswald Bastable and Others (includes four Bastable stories)[1]
- 1905 Pug Peter, King of Mouseland
- 1907 Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (reprint of The Children's Shakespeare, 1895)
- 1908 The Old Nursery Stories
- 1912 The Magic World
- 1925 Five of Us—and Madeline (posthumously assembled and edited by Rosamund E. Nesbit Bland, containing the title novel and two short stories perhaps completed by Nesbit)[50]
Short stories for adults
As Fabian Bland
- "Psychical Research". Longman's Magazine, December 1884
- "The Fabric of a Vision". Argosy, March 1885
- "An Angel Unawares". Weekly Dispatch, 9 August 1885
- "Desperate Conspirator". Weekly Dispatch, 15 May 1887
- "A Pot of Money". Weekly Dispatch, 21 August 1887
- "Christmas Roses". Weekly Dispatch, 25 December 1887
- "High Social Position". Weekly Dispatch, 8 July 1888
- "Mind and Money". Weekly Dispatch, 16 September 1888
- "Getting into Society". Weekly Dispatch, 30 September 1888
- "A Drama of Exile". Weekly Dispatch, 21 October 1888
- "A Pious Fraud". Weekly Dispatch, 11 November 1888
- "Her First Appearance". Weekly Dispatch, 16 December 1888
- "Which Wins?" Murray's Magazine, December 1888
- "Only a Joke". Longman's Magazine, August 1889
- "The Golden Girl". Weekly Dispatch, 21 December 1890
As E Nesbit
- "Uncle Abraham's Romance". Illustrated London News, 26 September 1891
- "The Ebony Frame". Longman's Magazine, October 1891
- "Hurst of Hurstcote", 1893
- "The Butler in Bohemia" (by Nesbit and Oswald Barron), OCLC 72479308, 1894
- "A Strayed Sheep". Thetford & Watton Times and People's Weekly Journal, 2 June 1894 (with Oswald Barron)
- "The Secret of Monsieur Roche Aymon". Atalanta Magazine, October 1894 (with Oswald Barron)
- "The Letter in Brown Ink". Windsor Magazine, August 1899
- "'Thirteen Ways Home", 1901
- "The Third Drug", Strand Magazine, February 1908, as by E. Bland. Reprinted in anthologies thus and as "The Three Drugs"[56]
- "These Little Ones", 1909
- "The Aunt and the Editor". North Star and Farmers' Chronicle, 15 June 1909
- "To the Adventurous", 1923
Short story collections for adults
- Grim Tales (horror stories), 1893
- "The Ebony Frame", "John Charrington's Wedding", "Uncle Abraham's Romance", "The Mystery of the Semi-Detached", "From the Dead", "Man-Size in Marble", "The Mass for the Dead"
- Something Wrong (horror stories), 1893
- In Homespun (10 stories "written in an English dialect" of South Kent and Sussex), 1896
- The Literary Sense (18 stories), 1903
- Man and Maid (10 stories), 1906 (some supernatural stories)[c]
- Fear (horror stories), 1910
- Collected Supernatural Stories, 2000
- "Dormant" ("Rose Royal"), "Man-size in Marble", "The Detective", "No. 17", "John Charrington's Wedding", "The Blue Rose", "The Haunted House", "The House With No Address" ("Salome and the Head"), "The Haunted Inheritance", "The House of Silence", "The Letter in Brown Ink", "The Shadow", "The New Samson", "The Pavilion"
- From the Dead: The Complete Weird Stories of E Nesbit, 2005
- "Introduction" (by S. T. Joshi), "John Charrington's Wedding", "The Ebony Frame", "The Mass for the Dead", "From the Dead", "Uncle Abraham's Romance", "The Mystery of the Semi-Detached", "Man-Size in Marble", "Hurst of Hurstcote", "The Power of Darkness", "The Shadow", "The Head", "The Three Drugs", "In the Dark", "The New Samson", "Number 17", "The Five Senses", "The Violet Car", "The Haunted House", "The Pavilion", "From My School-Days", "In the Dark", "The Mummies at Bordeaux"
- The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror, 2006
- "Man-Size in Marble", "Uncle Abraham's Romance", "From the Dead", "The Three Drugs", "The Violet Car", "John Charrington's Wedding", "The Pavilion", "Hurst of Hurstcote", "In the Dark", "The Head", "The Mystery of the Semi-detached", "The Ebony Frame", "The Five Senses", "The Shadow", "The Power of Darkness", "The Haunted Inheritance", "The Letter in Brown Ink", "The House of Silence", "The Haunted House", "The Detective"
Non-fiction
As Fabian Bland
- No pieces yet traced[58]
As E Nesbit
- "Women and Socialism: from the Middle-Class Point of View". Justice, 4 and 11 April 1885
- "Women and Socialism: A Working Woman's Point of View". Justice, 25 April 1885
- Wings and the Child, or The Building of Magic Cities, 1913
- Long Ago When I Was Young[59] (originally a serial, 'My School-Days: Memories of Childhood', in Girl's Own Paper 1896–1897)[60] Originally appearing as "My School-Days: Memories of Childhood" in The Girl's Own Paper between October 1896 and September 1897, Long Ago When I Was Young finally took book form in 1966, some 40 years after Nesbit's death, with an insightful introduction by Noel Streatfeild and some two dozen pen-and-ink drawings by Edward Ardizzone. The twelve chapters reproduce the instalments.
Poetry
- "A Lovers' Petition". Good Words, 17 August 1881
- "Absolution". Longman's Magazine, August 1882
- "Possibilities". Argosy, July 1884
- "Until the Dawn". Justice, 21 February 1885
- "Socialist Spring Song". Today, June 1885
- "The Dead to the Living". Gentleman's Magazine
- "Waiting". Justice, July 1885
- "Two Voices". Justice, August 1885
- "1857-1885". Justice, 22 August 1885
- "The Wife of All Ages". Justice, 18 September 1885
- "The Time of Roses", undated (c. 1890)
- 1886 "Lays and Legends"
- 1887 "The Lily and the Cross"
- 1887 "Justice for Ireland!". Warminster Gazette, 12 March 1887
- 1887 "The Ballad of Ferencz Renyi: Hungary, 1848". Longman's Magazine, April 1887
- 1887 "The Message of June". Longman's Magazine, June 1887
- 1887 "The Last Envoy"
- 1887 "The Star of Bethlehem"
- 1887 "Devotional Verses"
- 1888 "The Better Part, and Other Poems"
- 1888 "Landscape and Song"
- 1888 "The Message of the Dove"
- 1888 "All Round the Year"
- 1888 "Leaves of Life"
- 1889 "Corals and Sea Songs"
- 1890 "Songs of Two Seasons"
- 1892 "Sweet Lavender"
- 1892 "Lays and Legends", 2nd ed.
- 1895 "Rose Leaves"
- 1895 "A Pomander of Verse"
- 1898 "Songs of Love and Empire"
- 1901 "To Wish You Every Joy"
- 1905 "The Rainbow and the Rose"
- 1908 "Jesus in London"
- 1883–1908 "Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism"
- 1911 "Ballads and Verses of the Spiritual Life"
- 1912 "Garden Poems"
- 1915 "prayer in Time or War"[61]
- 1922 "Many Voices"
Songs
Explanatory notes
- Lower Kennington Lane is now the northern half of Kennington Lane, between Kennington Road and Newington Butts; the house has been demolished and there is no commemoration. Galvin, in her biography (p. 2), claims that Lower Kennington Lane is now buried deep below a main road and supermarkets. This rests on a confusion between modern Kennington Lane and its constituent former parts, Upper Kennington Lane and Lower Kennington Lane. Lower Kennington Lane still exists, though renamed and renumbered, but most of the houses of the 1850s have gone. An earlier version of the King's Arms public house, now at 98 Kennington Lane, was numbered 44 Lower Kennington Lane. The 1861 census records Edith Nesbit at her father's Agricultural College further along the street."Find My Past 1861 Census". search.findmypast.co.uk. Retrieved 29 July 2020. That site is now occupied by 20th-century public housing.
- The Book of Dragons (1901). This comprised The Seven Dragons, a 7-part serial, and an eighth story, all published 1899 in The Strand Magazine, with a ninth story, "The Last of the Dragons" (posthumous, 1925). It appeared in 1972 as The Complete Book of Dragons and in 1975 as The Last of the Dragons and Some Others. The original title was then used, with contents augmented by "The Last of the Dragons" and material contemporary to the reissue. The title Seven Dragons and Other Stories recurred for a latter-day Nesbit collection.[54]
- According to John Clute, "Most of Nesbit's supernatural fiction" contains short stories "assembled in four collections"; namely, Man and Maid and the three noted here as containing horror stories.[57]
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