-August 13, 1908
NEW YORK TIMES
There is great charm in E. Nesbit’s book, “The Enchanted Castle.” In its general character it is decidedly above the average run of so-called juvenile literature, and should prove vastly entertaining to the imaginative children to whom it is primarily addressed, as well as to grown-up folk who have a liking for books that are quaint, fanciful, and delicately humorous.
—July 11, 1908
THE NATION
If Emil [in Erich Kastner’s Emil and the Detective] is a real person, the “five children” constitute an equally real family. The public of Mrs. Nesbit, so large and devoted, will rejoice in this American edition of a book which has been making friends everywhere for twenty years. The ingenuity of the author’s imagination, her humor, and her charming outlook invest the adventures of her young characters with unceasing interest.
—November 19, 1930
C. S. LEWIS
Much better than either [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sir Nigel or Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court] was E. Nesbit’s trilogy, Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Wishing [sic] Carpet, and The Amulet. The last did most for me. It first opened my eyes to antiquity, the ‘dark backward and abysm of time.’ I can still reread it with delight.
—from Surprised by Joy (1955)
GORE VIDAL
After Lewis Carroll, E. Nesbit is the best of the English fabulists who wrote about children (neither wrote for children) and like Carroll she was able to create a world of magic and inverted logic that was entirely her own.
—New York Review of Books (December 3, 1964)
J. B. PRIESTLEY
The Edwardian variety of literary interests and abilities can be well illustrated by some mention of the finely-written whimsical tales it has left us, the kind of work later writers have never been able to improve upon or supplant.... And I am ready to include in this class Edith Nesbit’s entrancing stories about children, which I read and enjoyed as a child and then, enjoying them all over again, praised in print when I was fully adult—but still fascinated by magic.
—from The Edwardians (1970)
ALISON LURIE
Though there are foreshadowings of her characteristic manner in Charles Dickens’s Holiday Romance and Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age, Nesbit was the first to write at length for children as intellectual equals and in their own language. Her books were startlingly innovative in other ways: they took place in contemporary England, and recommended socialist solutions to its problems; they presented a modern view of childhood; and they used magic both as a comic device and as a serious metaphor for the power of the imagination. Every writer of children’s fantasy since Nesbit’s time is indebted to her—and so are some authors of adult fiction.
—New York Review of Books (October 25, 1984)
COLIN MANLOVE
In The Enchanted Castle we are more concerned with the inner world of the spirit, than with the outer world of objects and doings.... What is solid and real in the earlier books is less certain here. A statue may come alive, a dummy may turn into a half-person, a girl into a princess: nothing is what it seems. We are partly in a world of the imagination, partly in one of magic, and who is to say which it is? Where in the earlier books the imagination became real, here the real becomes the imagination. And where the earlier books took place mainly in the day, these later ones often have nighttime settings. It is as though Nesbit had passed from a materialist to an idealist attitude towards magic.
—from From Alice to Harry Potter: Children’s Fantasy in England (2003)
NATASHA WALTER
In the tales of Lewis or Rowling or Pullman the children find themselves part of a grand quest, a huge cosmic battle in which they will play a destined role. In Nesbit’s work everything is much more anarchic, and the children are always unsure whether they are going to be thrown into the darkest dungeon in Egypt or be sent to bed without supper. For her, magic worlds are as chaotic as real life; there are no Voldemorts or Dumbledores, no forces of pure evil or pure good, in her fantasies. So the children have to muddle through just as they would in everyday life.
—The Guardian (October 9, 2004)
Questions 1. Alison Lurie praises Nesbit for writing “at length for children as intellectual equals and in their own language.” But Gore Vidal claims that for all her virtues she wasn’t really writing “for children.” Discuss the voice of the narrator in these novels and the relationship between the narrator and the audience (or audiences) she seems to be addressing.2. How does Nesbit appropriate traditional folktales, ancient legends, and classical myths in these novels?3. What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of the looser episodic organization of the early fantasy Five Children and It, as compared to the more unified plot of The Enchanted Castle, a later work? Which approach do you prefer?4. Nesbit was known for focusing on a group of children rather than the single protagonist who had prevailed in earlier children’s fiction. Discuss the similarities and differences of character in the juvenile ensemble in these novels and the ways they interact with each other and respond to the challenges that come their way.5. Natasha Walter claims that, compared to the imaginary worlds of C. S. Lewis and other more recent fantasists, Nesbit’s works are “much more anarchic” and her “magic worlds are as chaotic as real life.” On the other hand, Colin Manlove argues that in her later fantasies Nesbit shifts “from a materialist to an idealist attitude towards magic” and “in The Enchanted Castle we are more concerned with the inner world of the spirit, than with the outer world of objects and doings.” Compare the kind of magic that appears in Five Children and It with the sort that comes to the fore in the second half of The Enchanted Castle.
FOR FURTHER READING
Other Children’s Books by Edith Nesbit
The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune. 1899. London: Puffin Books, 1994. Nesbit’s first full-length children’s novel.
The Book of Dragons. 1900. New York: Seastar Books, 2001. Still popular, a collection of eight dragon stories.
The Wouldbegoods: Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure Seekers. 1901. London: Puffin Books, 1996. The second volume in the Bastable series.
The Phoenix and the Carpet. 1904. London: Puffin Books, 1994. A sequel to Five Children and It.
The New Treasure Seekers. 1904. London: Puffin Books, 1996. The third volume in the Bastable series.
The Story of the Amulet. 1906. London: Puffin Books, 1996. The third and final volume of the “Five Children” series.
The Railway Children. 1906. London: Puffin Books, 1994. After The Story of the Treasure Seekers, her most popular family adventure novel.
The House of Arden. 1908. New York: Books of Wonder, 1997. The Arden children travel into the past in search of lost family treasure.