1858-1924 · English author of children's fantasies and family stories, including The Railway Children
About E. Nesbit
Edith Nesbit (1858-1924), who wrote as E. Nesbit, was born in London and supported her family for years by writing verse, stories, and journalism. With her husband Hubert Bland she was among the founders of the Fabian Society in 1884. Her first great success for children, The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), introduced the Bastable family; Five Children and It (1902) began her fantasies about ordinary children meeting magic, followed by The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), The Story of the Amulet (1906), and The Railway Children (1906).
Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane, with their baby brother the Lamb, have come from two years in Camden Town to a white house in the Kent countryside near Rochester, between a chalk-quarry and a gravel-pit. Their father is called away on business and their mother goes to nurse their sick grandmother, leaving them in the care of the nursemaid Martha and the other servants.
The Railway Children tells how Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis lose their comfortable London life and find friends, work and courage beside a country railway line. One evening, just after Peter's birthday, two men call, Father goes away with them, and Mother will say only that he has gone on business and that the children must not ask.