LIFE AND LOVES OF E. NESBIT

A strikingly attractive woman, with a keen sense of fun, E. Nesbit attracted a circle of young admirers who left fascinating glimpses of her in their letters and memoirs. She included them in her stories, and the letters she sent them are exceptionally revealing. She put the best of herself into her books for children. As Marcus Crouch explained she 'threw away their strong, sober, essentially literary style and replaced it with a miraculously colloquial, flexible and revealing prose which was her unique contribution to the children's novel.' She wove her whimsey and magic into the everyday lives of children. Nesbit's own life was just as extraordinary as anything found in the pages of her books. In adulthood she became as Humphrey Carpenter puts it, 'An energetic hack, keen to try anything to support her wayward husband and her odd household.' Her abiding passion was for poetry with a socialist theme. She lived through a time of extraordinary political upheaval and she was instrumental in introducing socialist thinking into British intellectual life. A founder member of the Fabian Society, she counted George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells among her closest friends. She was tireless for campaigning for the alleviation of poverty in London, and she spent considerable time and energy in helping poor children living on her doorstep in Deptford. She enjoyed the finer things in life and made no apology for doing so. She had a keen eye for nature and detested the creeping urbanisation she saw all around her. Some of her finest writing celebrates the beauty of the British countryside. The biography reveals who the person was behind the best loved classics The Railway Children and Five Children and It. 337 page paperback with photos including one of an elderly E. Nesbit holding chicks.