THE LIFE AND LOVES OF E. NESBIT

Edith Nesbit is considered the inventor of the children’s adventure story and her brilliant children’s books influenced bestselling authors including C.S. Lewis, P. L. Travers, J.K. Rowling, and Jacqueline Wilson, to name but a few. But who was the person behind the best loved classics The Railway Children and Five Children and It? Eleanor Fitzsimons, acclaimed biographer and prize winning author of Wilde’s Women, has written the most authoritative biography in more than three decades.

We are delighted to feature Eleanor on WWWB today!

When I was a little girl I borrowed my weekly adventures from the children’s section in our local library. The books I loved best were by E. Nesbit who told remarkable tales of magic and peril in which her fictional children faced real danger. Like many Victorian women writers, Edith Nesbit decided to use her initial rather than her first name, believing perhaps that her books would sell better if readers believed they had been written by a man.

Several critics expressed astonishment when she finally revealed the truth by dedicating one of her books to her husband, Hubert Bland. Nesbit’s great friend and fellow writer H.G. Wells, who was an admirer of her books before he ever met her, had been so convinced that she was a he that he insisted on calling her Ernest. 

Although her passion was for poetry with a socialist theme, Nesbit rarely had time to indulge this. Shortly after she married Hubert, when she was twenty-one and heavily pregnant with their first child, he left his secure job in a bank to set up a brush manufacturing business with a partner. The business failed almost immediately and a bout of ill health left Hubert unable to work for several years.

With no alternative available to her, Nesbit took over, writing verse for greeting cards she also painted in a desperate attempt to keep her family afloat. She moved on to writing and illustrating gift books for children but it wasn’t until she reached her early forties that she began to write the stories she is best remembered for.   

The secret of Nesbit’s popularity was not her ability to write like a man but her capacity to write stories that would captivate a child. “There is only one way of understanding children,” she wrote.

They cannot be understood by imagination, by observation, nor even by love. They can only be understood by memory. Only by remembering how you felt and thought when you yourself were a child can you arrive at any understanding of the thoughts and feelings of children.

Explaining why her intrepid Bastable children from The Story of The Treasure Seekers, her five children who dug up a magic sand fairy named “It”, and her much beloved The Railway Children, seem so real, she wrote, “I was a child once myself, and by some fortunate magic I remembered exactly how I used to feel and think about things”. 

Readers and critics agreed. The entry for E. Nesbit in the Dictionary of National Biography explains: 

Her characters were neither heroes nor moral dummies, but real young human beings behaving naturally. This gift of character drawing, aided by the ease and humour of her style, place her in the highest rank among writers of books for children. 

By leaving behind the safe, moralising tales that were written by her Victorian predecessors, Nesbit is credited with inventing the adventure story for children. Her influence on the writers that have followed her has been enormous. In Treasure Seekers and Borrowers, Marcus Crouch writes of her: “No writer for children today is free of debt to this remarkable woman”. 

Many of our most popular writers for children took inspiration from Nesbit’s books. In 1947, American writer Edward Eager was delighted to discover a second-hand copy of her book Wet Magic (1913) while searching for books to read to his son. “I have not got over the effects of that discovery yet, nor, I hope, will I ever,” he recalled, adding: 

Probably the sincerest compliment I could pay her is already paid in the fact that my own books for children could not even have existed if it were not for her influence. And I am always careful to acknowledge this indebtedness in each of my stories; so that any child who likes my books and doesn’t know hers may be led back to the master of us all. 

He recognised the key of her talent. “It was when the child in her spoke out directly to other children that she achieved greatness,” he wrote, adding: 

But there are lucky people who never lose the gift of seeing the world as a child sees it, a magic place where anything can happen next minute and delightful and unexpected things constantly do. Of such, among those of us who try to write for children, is the kingdom of Heaven. And in that kingdom E. Nesbit stands with the archangels. 

C.S. Lewis borrowed Edith’s wardrobe from her story ‘The Aunt and Amabel’ (1912), in which a little girl enters a magic world through a wardrobe. Aged seven, J.R.R Tolkien wrote a story about a ‘green great dragon’ at the same time as Nesbit’s Book of Beasts was being serialised in The Strand Magazine. In a letter to his publisher, written two years after The Hobbit was published, he described her as ‘an author I delight in’. Elements of Tolkien’s stories appear to draw on Edith’s work, and a story he told his children features a cantankerous sand-sorcerer he called a Psammead. 

In a lecture titled ‘In Celebration of Edith Nesbit,’ delivered at the Inaugural General Meeting of the Edith Nesbit Society on 29 October 1996, celebrated children’s author Joan Aiken took the opportunity to acknowledge her own debt: 

She [Nesbit] has had a powerful influence on my own writing, as can readily be seen. Her strongest point is her marvellous capacity for combining magical and fantastic ingredients with comic realistic situations. 

Jacqueline Wilson, who is President of the Edith Nesbit Society, brought the first instalment of Edith’s Psammead series up to date with Four Children and It (2012). When asked to name her favourite books, J.K. Rowling, hailed as the queen of modern-day writing for children, replied: 

The first of my chosen books is the famous story of the six Bastable children, who set out to restore the ‘fallen fortunes’ of their house: The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit. I think I identify with E. Nesbit more than any other writer. She said that, by some lucky chance, she remembered exactly how she felt and thought as a child, and I think you could make a good case, with this book as Exhibit A, for prohibition of all children’s literature by anyone who cannot remember exactly how it felt to be a child. 

Of her own style, Nesbit wrote, “I make it a point of honour never to write down to a child”. She answered every fan letter she received and even befriended several young fans. She dedicated The Wonderful Garden “to Cecily, Kathleen and Mavis Carter,” three young readers who had written to her to tell her how much they loved her books. She even put them into Wet Magic, the last serial she wrote for The Strand Magazine. She had them reading Kingsley’s The Water Babies, one of the books they told her they preferred to hers. This genuine empathy endeared her to young readers. As one reviewer noted, “Take a book by E. Nesbit into any family of boys and girls and they fall upon it like wolves”. 

Nesbit wove her whimsy and magic into the everyday lives of children and they would not easily let this go. It helped that her own life was just as extraordinary as anything she invented. A nervous child with a vivid imagination capable of conjuring up phantoms at every turn, she experienced loss and displacement when her father died, leaving her now twice-widowed mother, Sarah, to care for five children. As an adult, she lived through a time of extraordinary political upheaval.

As a founding member of the Fabian Society, she helped introduce socialist thinking into British intellectual life. She also fell in love with fellow Fabian George Bernard Shaw. 

Nesbit had a keen eye for nature and some of her finest writing celebrates the beauty of the British countryside. She was tireless in campaigning for the alleviation of poverty in London, and she expended considerable time and energy in helping the desperately poor children who lived on her doorstep in the deprived suburb of Deptford.

Yet she made no apology for enjoying the finer things in life and she threw fabulous parties. A strikingly attractive woman with a keen sense of fun, she attracted a circle of young admirers who have left fascinating glimpses of her in their letters and memoirs.

A celebrity in her lifetime, magazines and newspapers of the era include accounts of her life. Several of her books have never been out of print and she continues to inspire. When I discovered that the two biographies written about this remarkable author were long out of print, I knew for certain that she deserved a third. My new biography, The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit, tells the remarkable story of her life and celebrates her literary legacy.

—

Eleanor Fitzsimons is a researcher and writer specialising in historical and current feminist issues. She has an MA in Women, Gender and Society from University College Dublin. In 2013, she won the Keats-Shelley Essay Prize with her essay ‘The Shelleys in Ireland’ and she is a contributor to the Romanticism Blog. Her work has been published in a range of newspapers and journals including The Irish Times, the Guardian, History Ireland and History Today.

She is a regular radio and television contributor. Her book, Wilde’s Women: How Oscar Wilde was shaped by the women he knew was published by Duckworth Overlook on 16 October 2015 and won several awards including a silver medal in the Biography category of the 2018 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Awards.  Her new book, The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit (2019), has received excellent reviews prior to publication – For more: https://eafitzsimons.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/the-reviews-are-coming-in/

THE LIFE AND LOVES OF E. NESBIT

Edith Nesbit is considered the inventor of the children’s adventure story and her brilliant children’s books influenced bestselling authors including C.S. Lewis, P. L. Travers, J.K. Rowling, and Jacqueline Wilson, to name but a few. But who was the person behind the best loved classics The Railway Children and Five Children and It? Her once-happy childhood was eclipsed by the chronic illness and early death of her sister. In adulthood, she found herself at the centre of a love triangle between her husband and her close friend. She raised their children as her own.

Yet despite these troubling circumstances Nesbit was playful, contradictory and creative. She hosted legendary parties at her idiosyncratic Well Hall home and was described by George Bernard Shaw – one of several lovers – as ‘audaciously unconventional’. She was also an outspoken Marxist and founding member of the Fabian Society. Through Nesbit’s letters and deep archival research, Eleanor Fitzsimons reveals her as a prolific activist and writer on socialism. Nesbit railed against inequity, social injustice and state-sponsored oppression and incorporated her avant-garde ideas into her writing, influencing a generation of children – an aspect of her legacy examined here for the first time.

Eleanor Fitzsimons, acclaimed biographer and prize winning author of Wilde’s Women, has written the most authoritative biography in more than three decades. Here, she brings to light the extraordinary life story of an icon, creating a portrait of a woman in whom pragmatism and idealism worked side-by-side to produce a singular mind and literary talent.

***PRAISE FOR THE LIFE AND LOVES OF E. NESBIT***

‘Eleanor Fitzsimons’ painstaking research gives us a new insight into the bizarre Bohemian life of the groundbreaking children’s author E. Nesbit. It’s a fantastic read.’ Jacqueline Wilson

‘Absolutely superb!’ Hilary McKay, children’s author of The Skylarks War (shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards)

‘In this long-overdue new biography, Eleanor Fitzsimons gives us a nuanced yet compelling portrait of E. Nesbit’s many-facetted personality, life and works, as well as of the politically and culturally vibrant milieu in which she lived.’ Fiona Sampson, author of In Search of Mary Shelley

‘What a stirring and unexpected story Eleanor Fitzsimons tells and what a subject she has found. I can’t think of a single writer who doesn’t owe something to Edith Nesbit’s glorious books for children. The extraordinary woman who wrote them proves to be every bit as brave, funny and imaginative as her own intrepid characters.’ Miranda Seymour, author of In Byron’s Wake

‘One of the greatest children’s writers, and an acknowledged much loved influence on Joan Aiken E. Nesbit is celebrated in this wonderful new biography by Eleanor Fitzsimons.’ Lizza Aiken (daughter of Joan Aiken)

‘An exceptional biography about an absolutely fascinating individual.’ Adam Roberts, Vice-President of the H.G. Wells Society

‘A fascinating, thoughtfully organized, thoroughly researched, often surprising biography.’ Kirkus Review

‘Fitzsimons delivers a sprightly and highly readable life of a writer who deserves even wider recognition.’ Publishers Weekly

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing