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. 1867 Sarah Nesbit takes Mary and two of the other children, including Edith, to the warmer climate of France. The Nesbits travel throughout the country, never remaining in one place for long. 1868 The first part of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women appears. 1870 The Nesbit family moves to a Brittany farmhouse; the children are allowed to roam freely. A reluctant Edith is sent to various boarding schools and at one point a convent in Germany. Sarah Nesbit takes Mary back to London, where Mary becomes engaged to Philip Bourke Marston, a poet who is a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. 1871 In November, Mary Nesbit dies. George MacDonald publishes At the Back of the North Wind. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There appears. 1872 The Nesbits settle in Kent, renting Halstead Hall, where the children find many diversions, including railroad tracks that run through the property. Edith enters a period of great happiness. MacDonald’s most enduring book for children, The Princess and the Goblin, is released. 1875 Edith’s first published poems appear in a local paper, the Sunday Magazine. The family moves back to London. 1876 Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 1877 Edith meets Hubert Bland, a young writer and political activist. 1880 Hubert Bland and Edith Nesbit are married. Their first child, Paul, is born two months later. 1881 A second child, Iris, is born. 1882 Nesbit meets Alice Hoatson, who will have an ongoing affair with Bland. 1883 Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson publishes Treasure Island. George MacDonald publishes The Princess and Curdie. 1884 Bland and Nesbit help found the Fabian Society, a circle of progressive intellectuals committed to gradual social change through democratic reform. Nesbit is invited to write pamphlets for the group. The society attracts notable figures, including writers George Bernard Shaw and, later, H. G. Wells. Nesbit also adopts the image of the so-called New Woman of the late nineteenth century: She cuts her hair short, smokes cigarettes, and abandons her corset. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published. 1885 With Bland, Nesbit coauthors the novel The Prophet’s Mantle, a conventional romance plot set against a background of politics informed by their acquaintance with Russian émigrés living in London. When writing together, the couple often uses the alias “Fabian Bland.” The couple’s third child, Fabian, is born. 1886 Bland edits the Fabian Society journal, Today. His daughter Rosamund is born to Alice Hoatson; Nesbit agrees to raise the child as her own and allows Hoatson to move into the Bland-Nesbit home as a housekeeper. Nesbit has a brief affair with George Bernard Shaw. Lays and Legends, Nesbit’s collection of poems, is released to critical success. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy is published. 1892 Nesbit’s first long work for children, a book-length narrative poem entitled The Voyage of Columbus, is published. 1893 Nesbit publishes two collections of horror stories: Something Wrong and Grim Tales; the latter includes “Man-size in Marble,” one of her most popular tales. 1894 Rudyard Kipling publishes The Jungle Book, a collection of animal stories. Robert Louis Stevenson dies. 1895 H. G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, his first major work of science fiction. 1896 Nesbit begins to serialize her childhood reminiscences in The Girl’s Own Paper. 1898 H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds and Kenneth Grahame’s Dream Days are published. 1899 Nesbit begins her long collaboration with illustrator H. R. Millar when her dragon stories are published in The Strand Magazine. She also publishes Pussy and Doggy Tales, The Secret of Kyriels, an adult Gothic novel, and The Story of the Treasure Seekers, the first of the Bastable novels, with illustrations by Gordon Brown and Lewis Baumer. The success of The Treasure Seekers allows Nesbit and Bland to move into Well Hall, a spacious manor home. Bland’s second child with Alice Hoatson, christened John and nicknamed “The Lamb,” is born; Nesbit adopts and raises him. 1900 Nesbit publishes her dragon stories in the collection The Book of Dragons. L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Beatrix Potter publishes The Tale of Peter Rabbit. 1901 The Wouldbegoods, another Bastable novel, is published, as is Nesbit’s Nine Unlikely Tales for Children (later reprinted as Whereyouwanttogo and Other Unlikely Tales). Kipling’s Kim appears. 1902 Nesbit publishes Five Children and It, her first fantasy novel. She meets H. G. Wells, an important influence on her fiction and for several years a controversial and outspoken member of the Fabian Society. Nesbit’s adult novel The Red House and The Revolt of the Toys, and What Comes of Quarreling are published. Kipling’s Just So Stories is released. 1904 The New Treasure Seekers (another Bastable novel) and The Phoenix and the Carpet, featuring the “five children,” are published. J. M. Barrie produces his play Peter Pan; or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. 1905 Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess appears. 1906 The Railway Children is published, drawing on Nesbit’s childhood at Halstead Hall. The Story of the Amulet, the last of the “five children” novels, is also released, as is another adult novel, The Incomplete Amorist. Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill appears. 1907 The Enchanted Castle is published. 1908 Nesbit publishes her collected political poetry in Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism, 1883 to 1908. She introduces a new series with the publication of The House of Arden, a children’s time-travel romance. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows is published. London hosts the Olympic Games. 1909 These Little Ones, a collection of Nesbit’s stories, and Harding’s Luck, a sequel to The House of Arden, are published, as well as two adult novels, Salome and the Head (reissued as The House with No Address) and Daphne in Fitzroy Street, based on her affair with George Bernard Shaw. 1910 Nesbit publishes The Magic City, with a character (the Pretenderette) that seems to lampoon a prominent suffragette, Evelyn Sharp, to whom Nesbit writes a letter explaining why she refuses to join the movement. 1911 Nesbit publishes The Wonderful Garden, another children’s fantasy novel, and Dormant, often considered her finest adult novel. Hubert Bland’s vision deteriorates, leaving him almost blind and in the care of his wife. Barrie’s story about Peter Pan is published as a children’s novel titled Peter and Wendy, which will later be changed to Peter Pan. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden appears. 1912 Nesbit publishes The Magic World, a collection of stories. 1913 Nesbit publishes Wet Magic, a fantastical undersea adventure and her last children’s fantasy novel. The book marks the end of her association with illustrator H. R. Millar. 1914 In April, Hubert Bland dies. World War I begins. 1917 Nesbit marries Thomas Tucker, a retired tugboat operator affectionately known as “the Skipper.” 1920 A. A. Milne’s Mr. Pym Passes By is published, as is the first of Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle books. 1921 Nesbit and Tucker leave Well Hall and settle in Jesson St. Mary’s near Dymchurch. 1922 Nesbit publishes her last novel, The Lark, a romance based on the financial problems of her later years. 1924 Nesbit dies of cancer on May 4 in St. Mary’s. 1925 Five of Us—and Madeline is published. Rosamund Bland Sharp, Nesbit’s adopted daughter, compiles this collection of stories, using material provided by Nesbit’s second husband as well as excerpts from Nesbit’s memoirs originally published in The Girl’s Own Paper (1896-1897). 1966 Nesbit’s memoirs from The Girl’s Own Paper are published in book form under the title Long Ago When I was Young.