Edith Nesbit on Naxos AudioBooks

Born in 1858, Edith Nesbit was the youngest in her family. She had two brothers, a sister and a half-sister, and during her earliest years they all lived in an agricultural college in London which had been started by Edith’s grandfather. Edith described this time of her life as an ‘Eden’: she felt happy and secure.

When Edith was still a little girl, her father died. From then on, the stability of her life changed: the family moved around a lot. She went to various boarding schools, including one at which punishments came thick and fast for all kinds of tiny misdemeanours. It would be unimaginable today! Her mother told her she would get used to it, even though Edith cried herself to sleep.

But she hadn’t been at that school long when it was all change: they were off to the South of France where her mother had found a house. Edith was nearly to be left behind, but she begged to be taken with her mother and sisters. Her brothers, Alfred and Henry, remained at another school in England. To begin with, Edith was placed with a family so that she could learn French. She and the daughter were the same age, and they got on immediately. She had a wonderful time. When her mother moved again to a different area of France, she was sorry to leave her French family.

There were more schools and homes following this, before a happy three years spent at ‘Halstead Hall’ in Kent, a house rented by her mother for the family:

‘From a laburnum tree in the corner of the lawn we children slung an improvised hammock, and there I used to read and dream and watch the swaying green gold leaf and blossom.’

Here, the children could run through a field at the back of the house to a railway line – and there is the seed, planted in Nesbit’s memory, that later grew into her popular story The Railway Children.

From the age of fourteen to seventeen, Nesbit began to concentrate on writing poetry and even had some of it published in several magazines. She was to write a lot more poetry over the years, as well as her novels.

The young poet grew into a bright and striking woman, and married a charismatic bank clerk called Hubert Bland. The two moved in intellectual circles and were both socialists. They formed a debating group, which, as it gained more members, became the Fabian Society.

During the 1880s Nesbit was a lecturer and writer on socialism, but as she became a successful children’s writer these activities diminished. Her most famous novels include The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Railway Children, and The Enchanted Castle.

By Genevieve Helsby

Five and Children and It
by E. Nesbit
Read by Anna Bentinck

The Railway Children
by E. Nesbit
Read by Eve Karpf, Delia Paton, Robert Benfield, Sarah Corbett, Thomas Martin, and Nicola Grant

The Treasure Seekers
by E. Nesbit
Read by Teresa Gallagher

The Wouldbegoods
by E. Nesbit
Read by Teresa Gallagher

The Phoenix and the Carpet
by E. Nesbit
Read by Anna Bentinck

The Enchanted Castle
by E. Nesbit
Read by Joanna Page