As I mentioned the other day, a friend has just published a really brilliant book for children. This has got me thinking about books I enjoyed when I was a child. I was a great reader and almost swallowed books whole! I used to keep alist of everything I read and how I wish I still had it, it would be so fascinating. For some reason, maybe because I was talking to another friend about all sorts of things, I thought of E. Nesbit. I wrote about her a while ago, a fascinating woman:
E. Nesbit was a favourite author of mine when I was a child, I read and reread The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, The New Treasure Seekers, Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Story of the Amulet, The House of Arden and of course The Railway Children… What cracking tales they are, and I was surprised when I tried to find out more about Edith Nesbit that she was born in the middle of the nineteenth century and wrote (or published) those stories between 1899 and 1906… they are so timeless, , and surely there must be children today who read and enjoy them as I did; certainly they crop up on television and the cinema frequently.
Edith was born in 1858 in Surrey but very sadly her father died when she was only four years old. Her sister suffered ill-health, maybe tuberculosis, and they travelled around from seaside town to seaside town, to France to Spain before settling back in England. Edith had the sort of life which you’d normally think of as belonging in a soap opera; she married a man called Hubert (which is surely a name which will never be revived!) Edith was already seven months pregnant but she didn’t live with her husband as he was still living with his mother… living with his mother???? What sort of bloke was he?! Then Edith found out he had a fiancée (his widowed mother’s companion) who unknown to Edith had already had a child by him. If that wasn’t bad enough, her best friend Alice had a fling with him and also became pregnant. What an evil toad Hubert was.
Poor Edith; when Alice had confided she was pregnant, Edith had agreed to adopt Alice’s baby, not realising at first who the father was. The toad Hubert told Edith he would leave her unless she agreed to take Alice in as a housekeeper as well s bringing up the child, Rosamund. This situation continued and Alice became pregnant again thirteen years later and Edith (what a brick) again adopted the child.
Edith herself had three children, Paul, Iris, and Fabian. Fabian who was named after the Fabian Society in which Edith and Hubert were involved, died at the age of fifteen after he had an operation to remove his tonsils.
Edith must have really loved Hubert to continue not only to live with him, adopt his children by other women and keep him through what she earned as a writer. He died in 1914 and three years later Edith married again, Tom Tucker an engineer on the Woolwich Ferry; he was a completely different character from her usual circle of friends, no doubt deemed ‘common’ and speaking with a broad Cockney accent. She died in 1924, and Tom died in the same house eleven years later.
This extraordinary life is in such contrast to the safe and gentile world of the children in her stories, and it makes her an even more remarkable woman.
Here is a link to my friend Andrew Simpson to whom I was talking earlier, and to his blogs about Edith Nesbitt: https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Edith%20Nesbit
… and here is a link to my friend Hamish MacNeil’s new book for children, The Strange Discoveries at Wimblestone Road:
Lois Elsden 
Dear Louis,
thank you very much for all your infos about Edith Nesbitt. As we lived in Sweden and Norway when we were children we didn’t read Edith Nesbitt’s books. We are very happy to learn about her. Our favourite authors have been Astrid Lindgren, Selma Lagerlöf and Erich Kästner when we were children.
All the best
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Dear fabulous Four, I don’t know Selma at all – I must find out more about her.
I read Astrid’s stories when I was little – the Pippi Longstocking stories and I think there were others by her in our library but I can’t remember which.
My real favourite was Emile and the Detectives by Erich Kästner – I loved that book and read it so many times, even when I was older. I think I read the other Emil book too – maybe I need to get them again and reread! I didn’t realise he wrote the book which was made into the film ‘The Parent Trap’, Das doppelte Lottchen, another story I loved. Thanks for mentioning them, dear Four, I am going to explore Amazon and see what I can find! Love, Lois
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Good Luck, dear Lois.
We loved “Dot and Anton” very much. We read it again and again and “Das doppelte Lottchen” too.
Selma Lagerlöf’s book we liked was that about the wonderful adventure of Nils Holgerson. The other books she wrote like “Gösta Berling” are for adults. Our dear Bookfairy Selma is named after Selma Lagerlöf.
With love from the sunny sea
The Fab Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Selma is such a beautiful name, I was just thinking that yesterday evening when I read your comments!Which adult books would you recommend? xx
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Dear Lois,
you want to read adult books of Selma Lagerlöf. “Gösta Berling” is seen as her best work. It was her first big novel. I like “Jerusalem” too which is very well filmed.
Have fun reading Selma’s books
xx
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On my way to order them now, thanks fr the recommendations! I have bought ‘Emil’ now and will read it tonight in bed – where I did a lot of reading as a child!
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I hope nobody referred to me as an evil toad.
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Never!!
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The Treasure Seekers was my absolute favourite book as a child 😀
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Loved it! But I think my favourite was The Five Children and it, I always wanted to meet a Psammead
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