E. Nesbit
1858–1924
Biography
Edith Nesbit, who published her children's books as E. Nesbit, lived from 1858 to 1924. She was born in Kennington, in south London, and her family moved often during her childhood, living in Brighton, Buckinghamshire and several places in France, as well as in Spain and Germany, because her sister's health was poor. In 1880 she married Hubert Bland, and the couple became founding members of the Fabian Society in 1884, a socialist group later linked with the Labour Party. Nesbit remained a political activist alongside her writing.
She wrote more than sixty books for children and others, and she is best known for stories in which ordinary children come across magic in everyday places. The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) follows the Bastable family, a middle-class household that has fallen on harder times, while Five Children and It (1902) introduces the Psammead, a sand-fairy who grants wishes that turn out to be complicated. Critics often describe her as the creator of modern children's fantasy, because she placed magic among realistic children in the real world, and later writers including P. L. Travers were influenced by her. She also wrote adult fiction, some of it with Bland under the name Fabian Bland.
The Railway Children (1906) is the book on this site. Its three children move with their mother to a house beside a railway line after their father is taken away from them, and the story follows their resourceful and good-humoured efforts to make the best of a new life. A place in Kent where Nesbit lived as a girl is often said to have inspired the setting, though a town in Derbyshire also claims the link. A 1970 film made the story widely known, and it remains one of her best-known books.
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Books
The Railway Children
by E. Nesbit
The Railway Children is a children's book by Edith Nesbit. Originally serialised in The London Magazine in thirteen instalments from January 1905 to January 1906, it was published in book form in 1906. It has been adapted for the screen several times, of which the best known is…
Summary from Wikipedia: The Railway Children (CC BY-SA 4.0)