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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.

For the American model, see Evelyn Nesbit.

Edith Nesbit
Nesbit, c. 1890
Born(1858-08-15)15 August 1858
Kennington, Surrey (now Greater London), England[1]
Died4 May 1924(1924-05-04) (aged 65)
New Romney, Kent, England
Pen nameE. Nesbit
OccupationWriter, poet
Period1886–1924
GenreChildren's literature
Notable works
  • The Story of the Treasure Seekers
  • The Railway Children
  • Five Children and It
Spouse
Hubert Bland
​
​
(m. 1880; died 1914)​
Thomas Tucker
​
(m. 1917)​

Biography


Nesbit was born in 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane, Kennington, Surrey (now classified as Inner London),[lower-alpha 1] the daughter of an agricultural chemist, John Collis Nesbit, who died in March 1862, before her fourth birthday.[2] Her mother was Sarah Green (née Alderton).

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 believed she was Hubert's fiancée and had also borne him a child. 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.[6]

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,[7] and Fabian Bland (1885–1900). 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.

E. Nesbit's grave in St Mary in the Marsh's churchyard bears a wooden marker by her second husband, Thomas Terry Tucker. There is also a memorial plaque to her inside the church.
E. Nesbit's grave in St Mary in the Marsh's churchyard bears a wooden marker by her second husband, Thomas Terry Tucker. There is also a memorial plaque to her inside the church.

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,[2] 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",[14] 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,[15] 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.[16] She and her husband entertained many friends, colleagues and admirers at Well Hall.[17]

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 to "The Long Boat" at Jesson, St Mary's Bay, New Romney, Kent, where probably suffering from lung cancer (she "smoked incessantly"),[18] she died in 1924 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.


Writer


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".[19] In all she published about 40 books for children, including novels, storybooks and picture books.[20] 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".[21] Briggs also credits Nesbit with inventing the children's adventure story.[22] 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."[23]

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."[24] Her children's writing also included plays and collections of verse.

Nesbit has been cited as the creator of modern children's fantasy.[25] 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.[26] 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[27] 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.[28] However, not all sources agree on this finding:[29] The magazine Tor.com posited an error in the earlier news reports, saying both books had been released in the same year, 1906.[30]

In The New Yorker, Jessica Winter has noted that Nesbit's books are at times "blighted by racist and colonialist language and anti-Semitic tropes." 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."[31] In 2022, nearly a century after her death, The Railway Children (HarperCollins Children’s Classics) and The House of Arden (New York Review Children’s Collection) were reissued. 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."[31]


Legacy


Nesbit's life led to a one-act, one-woman play, Larks and Magic, by Alison Neil.[38][39][40]

The Edith Nesbit Society was founded in 1996 with Dame Jacqueline Wilson as president.[41]

In The Guardian, Francis Spufford placed The Story of the Amulet first on his list of greatest children's books.[42]

A. S. Byatt's novel The Children's Book is inspired partly by Nesbit, who appears as a character along with Kenneth Grahame and J. M. Barrie.[43]


Biographies


Aside from her autobiographical Long Ago When I was Young 1966), Nesbit has spawned five biographies.


Works



Novels for children



Bastable series

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


Other children's novels


Novels for adults


As Fabian Bland:[46]

As E Nesbit


Stories and storybooks for children



Short stories for adults


As Fabian Bland

As E Nesbit


Short story collections for adults



Non-fiction


As Fabian Bland

As E Nesbit


Poetry



Songs



Explanatory notes


  1. 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.
  2. 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.[49]
  3. 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.[52]

References



Citations


  1. E. Nesbit at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  2. Holmes, John R. (2007). "E. Nesbit". Guide to Literary Masters and Their Works. Salem Press.
  3. Elisabeth Galvin, The Extraordinary Life of E Nesbit, p. 16.
  4. "Railway Children battle lines are drawn". Telegraph & Argus. Bradford. 22 April 2000. Archived from the original on 21 September 2012. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  5. "London Remembers: Edith Nesbit". www.londonremembers.com. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  6. Langley Moore, Doris (1966). E. Nesbit: a biography. Philadelphia and New York: Chilton Books. pp. 70–71, 102–103.
  7. "Ancestry – Sign In". www.ancestry.co.uk.
  8. "Ancestry – Sign In". www.ancestry.co.uk.
  9. Lawrence, Ben (4 July 2016). "Five children and a philandering husband: E Nesbit's private life". The Telegraph – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  10. Bedson, S. P. (1947). "John Oliver Wentworth Bland (born 6 October 1899, died 10 May 1946)". The Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology. 59 (4): 716–721. doi:10.1002/path.1700590427.
  11. Phillippa Bennett and Rosemary Miles (2010). William Morris in the Twenty-First Century. Peter Lang. ISBN 3034301065. p. 136.
  12. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)"Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  13. "Introduction". Five Children and It. London: Penguin Books Ltd. 1996. ISBN 9780140367355.
  14. The Prophet's Mantle (1885), a work of fiction inspired by the life of Peter Kropotkin in London.[full citation needed]
  15. "Well Hall" entry of London Gazetteer by Russ Willey, (Chambers 2006) ISBN 0-550-10326-0 (online extract )
  16. "Edith Nesbit". Women of Eastbourne.
  17. Iannello, Silvia (18 August 2008). "Edith Nesbit, la precorritrice della Rowling". Tvcinemateatro―i protagonisti. Silvia-iannello.blogspot.com (reprint 19 September 2011 from Zam (zam.it)). Retrieved 9 August 2012.
  18. Gardner, Lyn (26 March 2005). "how did E Nesbit come to write such an idealised celebration of Victorian family life?". The Guardian.
  19. Donald Macleod, ed. Good Words, vol. 19, London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1878, p. 208.
  20. Lisle, Nicola (15 August 2008). "E Nesbit: Queen of Children's Literature". AbeBooks (abebooks.co.uk).
  21. Briggs 1987, pp. xi, xx.
  22. Briggs 1987, p. xi.
  23. Barry Day, 2009. The Letters of Noël Coward. New York: Vintage Books. March 2009. p. 74.
  24. Vidal, Gore (3 December 1964). "The Writing of E. Nesbit". The New York Review of Books (2). Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  25. Nikolajeva 2012, p. 51.
  26. Morrow, Clark Elder (October 2011). "Edith Nesbit: An Appreciation". Vocabula Review. 13 (10): 18. Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  27. Nicholson, Mervyn (Fall 1998). "C. S. Lewis and the Scholarship of Imagination in E. Nesbit and Rider Haggard". Renascence. 51 (1): 41–62. doi:10.5840/renascence19985114. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
  28. Copping, Jasper (20 March 2011). "The Railway Children 'plagiarised' from earlier story". The Telegraph. London. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
  29. Page, Benedicte (21 March 2011). "E Nesbit's classic The Railway Children accused of 'plagiarism'". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  30. Ness, Mari (22 September 2011). "Adventures in Railroads: The Railway Children". Tor.com. Macmillan. [...] although news reports initially said that that The House by the Railway was published in 1896 – ten years before The Railway Children – that turns out to be the publication start of the series that the book appeared in, not the actual book. Both were published in 1906, and then as now, books took some time to get from the typewriter into actual print.
  31. Winter, Jessica (28 September 2022). "The British writer who rewrote the world for children". New Yorker. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
  32. Stanton B. Garner (1999). Trevor Griffiths: Politics, Drama, History. University of Michigan Press. p. 105.
  33. "TQ4274: Edith Nesbit Walk, Eltham". Geograph. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  34. "Edith Nesbit Gardens". Lewisham Parks and Open Spaces. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  35. "Railway Children Walk". www.geoview.info. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  36. Jones, Roger. "Visit to Hebden Bridge". www.wordpress.com. Wordpress. Archived from the original on 22 December 2014. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  37. This was marketed in 2020."RightMove: Long Boat & Jolly Boat". www.rightmove.co.uk. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  38. Larks and Magic at alisonneil.co.uk, Accessed 18 February 2018.
  39. 'Larks and Magic', a new play by Alison Neil at uktw.co.uk, Accessed 18 February 2018.
  40. BROCKWEIR EVENTS at the Mac Hall LARKS AND MAGIC Saturday 17th February, 7.30 for 8.00 Written and performed by Alison Neil at brockweirvillagehall.co.uk. Accessed 18 February 2018.
  41. "Edith Nesbit Society". edithnesbit.co.uk. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
  42. Spufford, Francis (29 November 2001). "The greatest stories ever told". The Guardian.
  43. Clark, Alex (8 May 2009). "Her Dark Materials". The Guardian.
  44. "Guardian review of The Life and Loves of E Nesbit". www.theguardian.com. 26 October 2019. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  45. "Five of Us—and Madeline". ISFDB. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  46. Simkin, John. "Edith Nesbit". www.spartacus-educational.com. Spartacus Educational Publishers Ltd. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
  47. "Edith Nesbit Books". The Folio Society. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  48. "E.Nesbit". Delphi Classics. 20 October 2013. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  49. "The Book of Dragons". ISFDB.
    "The Seven Dragons and Other Stories". ISFDB. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  50. OCLC 62770293
  51. "The Third Drug". ISFDB. Retrieved 6 February 2013.
  52. "Nesbit, E". SFE: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (sf-encyclopedia.com). Entry by "JC", John Clute. Last updated 8 August 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  53. While none have yet been traced, Edith Nesbit and her husband reportedly co-wrote articles using this name. Southern Echo,18 October 1889
  54. "book lookup – Long ago when I was young". www.nla.gov.au. National Library of Australia. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
  55. Lovegrove, Chris (4 February 2014). "The sweet white flowers of memory". www.wordpress.com. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
  56. Slave song. OCLC. OCLC 60194453.

Sources




Wikisource has original works by or about:
Edith Nesbit
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Online texts

На других языках

- [en] E. Nesbit

[es] Edith Nesbit

Edith Nesbit (Londres, 15 de agosto de 1858 - 4 de mayo de 1924) fue una escritora y poetisa inglesa. Menor de seis hermanos, viajó por Inglaterra, España y Francia. Se casó a los 21 años con Hubert Bland, con quien tuvo cinco hijos. Fundó la Sociedad Fabiana. Fue una de las primeras mujeres en fumar en público. Murió de cáncer de pulmón. Escribió terror, romance, poesía, propaganda socialista,obras de teatro y reseñas. Y escribió un libro muy famoso llamado El castillo encantado.

[ru] Несбит, Эдит

Эдит Несбит (Эдит Блэнд; англ. Edith Nesbit; 15 августа 1858 — 4 мая 1924) — английская писательница и поэтесса. Автор (соавтор) более 60 произведений художественной литературы для детей, некоторые из которых были адаптированы для кино и телевидения. Она также была политическим активистом и одним из основателей Фабианского общества, предшественника современной лейбористской партии.


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