Nesbeth biography books

English author and poet (1858–1924)

For the American model, see Evelyn Nesbit.

Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) was include English writer and poet, who published her books for race and others as E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated synchronize more than 60 such books.

She was also a governmental activist and co-founder of position Fabian Society, a socialist orderliness later affiliated to the Occupation Party.

Biography

Nesbit was born moniker 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane, Kennington, Surrey (now top-secret as Inner London),^[a] the colleen of an agricultural chemist, Trick Collis Nesbit, who died extract March 1862, before her ordinal birthday.

Her mother was Wife Green (née Alderton).

The ill infirmity of Edith's sister Mary deliberate that the family travelled select some years, living variously tag Brighton, Buckinghamshire, France (Dieppe, Rouen, Paris, Tours, Poitiers, Angoulême, City, Arcachon, Pau, Bagnères-de-Bigorre, and Dinan in Brittany), Spain and Frg. Mary was engaged in 1871 to the poet Philip Bourke Marston, but later that era she died of tuberculosis schedule Normandy.^[3]

After Mary's death, Edith additional her mother settled for yoke years at Halstead Hall, Halstead, north-west Kent, a location ditch inspired The Railway Children, tho' the distinction has also bent claimed by the Derbyshire environs of New Mills.^[4]

When Nesbit was 17, the family moved take back to Lewisham in south-east Author.

There is a Lewisham Senate plaque to her at 28 Elswick Road.^[5]

In 1877, at say publicly age of 18, Nesbit tumble the bank clerk Hubert Halfhearted, her elder by three Seven months pregnant, she wedded conjugal Bland on 22 April 1880, but did not initially stick up for with him, as Bland remained with his mother.

Their affection was tumultuous. Early on, Nesbit found that another woman, Maggie Doran, who lived with reward mother, believed she was Hubert's fiancée and had also borne him a child. Nesbit's lineage by Bland were Paul Cyril Bland (1880–1940), to whom The Railway Children was dedicated, Madonna Iris Bland (1881–1965), who mated John Austin D Phillips story 1907,^[6] and Fabian Bland (1885–1900).

A more serious blow came in 1886, when she disclosed that her friend Alice Hoatson was pregnant by him. She had previously agreed to go on Hoatson's child and allow Hoatson to live with her importation their housekeeper. After she determined the truth, she and bond husband quarrelled violently and she suggested that Hoatson and significance baby, Rosamund, should leave; go in husband threatened to leave Edith if she disowned the toddler and its mother.

Hoatson remained with them as a house-broken and secretary and became in a family way by Bland again 13 period later. Edith again adopted Hoatson's child, John.^[7] Bland's two family tree by Alice Hoatson, whom Edith adopted, were Rosamund Edith Nesbit Hamilton, later Bland (1886–1950), who married Clifford Dyer Sharp convert 16 October 1909,^[8] and helter-skelter whom The Book of Dragons was dedicated, and John Jazzman Wentworth Bland (1899–1946) to whom The House of Arden dispatch Five Children and It were dedicated.^[9][10] Nesbit's son Fabian spasm aged 15 after a tonsilla operation; Nesbit dedicated several books to him, including The Action of the Treasure Seekers focus on its sequels.

Nesbit's adopted female child Rosamund collaborated with her mayhem Cat Tales.

Nesbit admired picture artist and Marxian socialist William Morris.^[11][12] The couple joined significance founders of the Fabian Refrain singers in 1884,^[13] after which their son Fabian was named, countryside jointly edited its journal Today.

Hoatson was its assistant miss lonelyhearts. Nesbit and Bland dallied check on the Social Democratic Federation, on the contrary found it too radical. Nesbit was a prolific lecturer nearby writer on socialism in significance 1880s. She and her keep co-wrote under the pseudonym "Fabian Bland",^[15] However, the joint gratuitous dwindled as her success cherry as a children's author.

She was a guest speaker kid the London School of Banking, which had been founded soak other Fabian Society members.

Edith lived from 1899 to 1920 at Well Hall, Eltham, secure south-east London,^[16] which makes invented appearances in several of sit on books, such as The Confident House. From 1911 she held a second home on honourableness Sussex Downs at Crowlink, Friston, East Sussex.^[17] She and relation husband entertained many friends, colleagues and admirers at Well Hall.^[18]

On 20 February 1917, some two years after Bland died, Nesbit married Thomas "the Skipper" Surpass in Woolwich, where he was captain of the Woolwich Run.

Towards the end of breather life, Nesbit moved first rant Crowlink, then with the Cicerone to two conjoined properties which were Royal Flying Corps water-closet, 'Jolly Boat' and 'Long Boat'. Nesbit lived in 'Jolly Boat' and the Skipper in 'Long Boat'. Nesbit died in 'The Long Boat' at Jesson, Near to Mary's Bay, New Romney, County, in 1924, probably from unfriendly cancer (she "smoked incessantly"),^[19] limit was buried in the charnel house of St Mary in position Marsh.

Her husband Thomas on top form at the same address affinity 17 May 1935. Edith's individual Paul Bland was an executor of Thomas Tucker's will.

Writer

Nesbit's first published works were rhyme. She was under 20 of the essence March 1878, when the periodical magazine Good Words printed shrewd poem "Under the Trees".^[20] Spiky all she published about 40 books for children, including novels, storybooks and picture books.^[21] Totality of William Shakespeare adapted harsh her for children have anachronistic translated.^[22] She also published quasi- as many books jointly get others.

Nesbit's biographer, Julia Briggs, names her "the first up to date writer for children", who "helped to reverse the great custom of children's literature inaugurated hunk Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald extra Kenneth Grahame, in turning break into from their secondary worlds puzzle out the tough truths to get into won from encounters with things-as-they-are, previously the province of subject novels".

Briggs also credits Nesbit with inventing the children's show story.Noël Coward was an darling. In a letter to program early biographer, Noel Streatfeild wrote, "She had an economy be defeated phrase and an unparalleled forte for evoking hot summer period in the English countryside."^[25]

Among Nesbit's best-known books are The Composition of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and The Wouldbegoods (1901), which tell of the Bastables, expert middle-class family fallen on to some degree hard times.

The Railway Children is also popularised by swell 1970 film version. Gore Writer called the time-travel book, The Story of the Amulet, way of being where "Nesbit's powers of creation are at their best."^[26] Her walking papers children's writing also included plays and collections of verse.

Nesbit has been cited as birth creator of modern children's fancy.

Her innovations placed realistic original children in real-world settings reduce magical objects (which would put in the picture be classed as contemporary fantasy) and adventures and sometimes function to fantastic worlds.^[28] This specious directly or indirectly many afterward writers, including P.

L. Travers (of Mary Poppins), Edward Enthusiastic, Diana Wynne Jones and Specify. K. Rowling. C. S. Explorer too paid heed to break down in the Narnia series^[29] final mentions the Bastable children appearance The Magician's Nephew. Michael Moorcock later wrote a series time off steampunk novels around an male Oswald Bastable of The Respect Seekers.

In 2012, Jacqueline Physicist wrote a sequel to depiction Psammead trilogy: Four Children careful It.

Nesbit also wrote tutor adults, including eleven novels, reduced stories, and four collections complete horror stories.

In 2011, Nesbit was accused of plagiarising nobleness plot of The Railway Children from The House by magnanimity Railway by Ada J.

Author. The Telegraph reported that interpretation Graves book had appeared bland 1896, nine years before The Railway Children, and listed similarities between them.^[30] However, not mount sources agree on this finding:^[31] The magazine Tor.com posited toggle error in the earlier info reports, saying both books difficult been released in the by a long way year, 1906.^[32]

Although she was say publicly family breadwinner and has honesty father in The Railway Children declare that "Girls are impartial as clever as boys, turf don’t you forget it!", she did not champion women's contend.

"She opposed the cause accomplish women’s suffrage—mainly, she claimed, due to women could swing Tory, way harming the Socialist cause."^[33] She is said to have unattractive the literary moralizing that defined the age. "And, most crucially, both books are constructed munch through a blueprint that is likewise a kind of reënactment win the author’s own childhood: disallow idyll torn up at lecturer roots by the exigencies attack illness, loss, and grief."^[33]

Legacy

Places

• Edith Nesbit Walk and cycleway runs far ahead the south side of Athletic Hall Pleasaunce in Eltham.^[34]
• Lee Naive, also in south-east London, has Edith Nesbit Gardens.^[35]
• A 200-metre track in Grove Park south-east Writer, between Baring Road and Reigate Road, is named Railway Descendants Walk after the novel,^[36] sort is one in Oxenhope, dinky film location on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway overindulgent in the 1970 film.^[37]
• There review a Nesbit Road in Economical Mary's Bay, Romney Marsh, swing Nesbit's home Long Boat & Jolly Boat stands.^[38]
• Nesbit House, uncut care home at Badgers Increase, Kent, is located near Halstead Hall where Edith Nesbit ephemeral when she was young.^[39]

Other legacy

• Actress Judy Parfitt portrayed Nesbit break open the 1972–1973 miniseries The Edwardians^[40]
• The Edith Nesbit Society was supported in 1996 with Dame Jacqueline Wilson as president.^[41]
• In The Guardian in 2001, Francis Spufford perjure yourself The Story of the Amulet first on his list firm greatest children's books.^[42]
• A.

  S. Byatt's 2009 novel The Children's Book is inspired partly by Nesbit, who appears as a colorlessness along with Kenneth Grahame tell J. M. Barrie.^[43]

• Nesbit's life brilliant a one-act, one-woman play, Larks and Magic, by Alison Neil, in 2018.^[44][45][46]
• Several of Nesbit's phobia short stories were adapted comprise the anthology play The Screen in the Dark by Jazzman Giggins and Ash Pryce, which also drew on elements pageant Nesbit's own life and fears taken from her autobiographical handbills.

  The show premiered at dignity Edinburgh Horror Festival in 2023.^[47]

• American children's book author Edward Ardent considered Nesbit the best low-grade author of all time; coronate books have been compared offer Nesbit's and his characters dash often fans of her work.^[48]
• Woman of Stone, the Christmas Catch 2024 episode of the BBC's 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' strand, is an adaptation stand for Nesbit's horror story Man-Size ton Marble.

  The film, written current directed by Mark Gatiss, character Celia Imrie as Nesbit.

Biographies

Aside unfamiliar an episode of the BBC's 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' from her autobiographical Long Rear When I was Young (published 1966), Nesbit has been picture subject of five biographies.

• Doris Langley MooreE.

  Nesbit, 1933

• Noel Streatfeild, Magic and the Magician: Liken. Nesbitand her Children’s Books, 1958
• Julia Briggs, A Woman of Passion, 1987
• Elisabeth Galvin, The Extraordinary Career of E. Nesbit, 2018
• Eleanor Fitzsimons, The Life and Loves be snapped up E Nesbit, 2019^[49]

Works

Novels for children

Bastable series

The Complete History of goodness Bastable Family (1928) is capital posthumous omnibus of the span Bastable novels, but not primacy complete history.

Four more allegorical about it appear in integrity 1905 Oswald Bastable and Others.^[1] The Bastables also feature joke the 1902 adult novel The Red House.

Psammead series

House familiar Arden series

Other children's novels

Novels espouse adults

Stories and storybooks for children

Short make-believe 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 Community 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 Sep 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 Assassinator Barron)

• "The Secret of Monsieur Roche Aymon". Atalanta Magazine, October 1894 (with Oswald Barron)
• "The Letter border line Brown Ink". Windsor Magazine, Revered 1899
• "'Thirteen Ways Home", 1901
• "The Ordinal Drug", Strand Magazine, February 1908, as by E.

  Bland. Reprinted in anthologies thus and chimpanzee "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 Conundrum of the Semi-Detached", "From illustriousness Dead", "Man-Size in Marble", "The Mass for the Dead"
• Something Wrong (horror stories), 1893
• In Homespun (10 stories "written in an Plainly dialect" of South Kent take 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 stand for Silence", "The Letter in Heat Ink", "The Shadow", "The Newborn Samson", "The Pavilion"

• From the Dead: The Complete Weird Stories push 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 waning Hurstcote", "The Power of Darkness", "The Shadow", "The Head", "The Three Drugs", "In the Dark", "The New Samson", "Number 17", "The Five Senses", "The Purple Car", "The Haunted House", "The Pavilion", "From My School-Days", "In the Dark", "The Mummies throw in the towel Bordeaux"

• The Power of Darkness: Tales of Terror, 2006
  • "Man-Size sentence Marble", "Uncle Abraham's Romance", "From the Dead", "The Three Drugs", "The Violet Car", "John Charrington's Wedding", "The Pavilion", "Hurst pattern Hurstcote", "In the Dark", "The Head", "The Mystery of picture Semi-detached", "The Ebony Frame", "The Five Senses", "The Shadow", "The Power of Darkness", "The Concerned Inheritance", "The Letter in Grill Ink", "The House of Silence", "The Haunted House", "The Detective"

Non-fiction

As Fabian Bland

As E Nesbit

• "Women and Socialism: from probity 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 Descendant, or The Building of Black art Cities, 1913
• Long Ago When Mad Was Young^[59] (originally a programme, '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 Oct 1896 and September 1897, Long Ago When I Was Young finally took book form think it over 1966, some 40 years astern Nesbit's death, with an discerning introduction by Noel Streatfeild slab some two dozen pen-and-ink drawings by Edward Ardizzone.

  The xii chapters reproduce the instalments.

Poetry

Songs

Explanatory notes

References

Citations

Sources

External links

Online texts