Edith Nesbit, a pioneer of twentieth-century children’s fiction, was one of the major authors of the “Golden Age” of children’s literature, which included Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Louisa May Alcott, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. She was born in 1858, the youngest of six children. Her childhood was disrupted in 1862 by the sudden death of her father, the head of a small agricultural college in South London. For several years, Edith’s mother ran the college on her own, but when Edith’s sister Mary contracted tuberculosis, Mrs. Nesbit began moving the family to various locations in England and France in an ultimately futile effort to find a suitable climate. The energetic and sometimes mischievous Edith was sent off intermittently to boarding schools, where she was often unhappy. At other times, she was allowed to roam freely through the countryside around the homes the family rented. She began publishing poetry in her teens, and though her lasting reputation is based on her children’s books, she aspired to become a major poet throughout her life.
In 1880 Edith married the dashing and politically active Hubert Bland and soon afterward gave birth to their first child. Four years later the couple joined Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and several others as founding members of the Fabian Society, an influential circle of progressive intellectuals who would play a major role in the formation of social policy over the coming decades; Bland edited the society’s journal. Since he was an uncertain breadwinner, Edith began to support the family by her writing. For nearly two decades she composed (in addition to her verse) a multitude of essays, short stories, adult novels, and tales for children, often working at top speed to keep the family afloat. At the same time, she adopted the image of the so-called New Woman, cutting her hair short, wearing loose-fitting “aesthetic” clothing, and assuming what was then the exclusively male prerogative of smoking cigarettes. Tall, athletic, and by all accounts highly attractive, she also responded to her husband’s incessant womanizing by conducting affairs of her own, including a short-lived romance with George Bernard Shaw.
After twenty years of prolific publication and modest critical success, Nesbit finally achieved acclaim with the release of her first children’s novel, The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), a family adventure story. It was the start of a remarkable period of creative activity. The Wouldbegoods, a sequel to her first novel, appeared in 1901, followed by The New Treasure Seekers (1904). During this time, she also wrote her first fantasy novel, Five Children and It (1902) and employed the same “five children” in two sequels, The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and The Story of the Amulet (1906). In 1906 she published one of her most enduring family adventure tales, The Railway Children, and in the following year The Enchanted Castle (1907), which many regard as her most mature work of children’s fiction. Inspired by H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), she then produced two time-travel romances for children, The House of Arden (1908) and its sequel, Harding’s Luck (1909), and several other works of fantasy—The Magic City (1910), The Wonderful Garden (1911), The Magic World (1912), and Wet Magic (1913). Her output declined dramatically after Hubert’s death in 1914. At the time of Edith Nesbit’s death, on May 4, 1924, her literary reputation had ebbed, but it recovered in the 1930s, and ever since she has been regarded as one of the seminal voices of modern children’s literature.
THE WORLD OF EDITH NESBIT AND THE ENCHANTED CASTLE AND FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
1858 Edith Nesbit is born on August 15 in Kennington, South Lon- don, the sixth and youngest child of John Collis and Sarah Green (nee Alderton) Nesbit. Her family lives on the campus of an agricultural school founded by Edith’s paternal grandfather; her father is the headmaster and teaches chemistry.
1862 In March, John Nesbit dies at the age of forty-three, and Edith’s mother takes over the running of the college.
1863 Charles Kingsley’s pioneering work of children’s fantasy The Water-Babies is published; along with subsequent books by Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald, it marks the beginning of a golden era of children’s fantasy and of children’s literature in general.
1865 Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland appears.
1866 Edith’s sister Mary contracts tuberculosis, and the family moves to the seaside in search of a healthier climate. Edith is briefly enrolled in boarding school, where she is bullied.