Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
E. Nesbit
-
Standard Name: Nesbit, E.
Birth Name: Edith Nesbit
Nickname: Daisy
Indexed Name: E. Nesbit
Married Name: Edith Bland
Pseudonym: Ethel Mortimer
Pseudonym: Fabian Bland
Married Name: Edith Tucker
EN
, writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, was an immensely prolific poet, journalist, novelist, and occasionally a playwright, who is remembered today almost entirely for her enduringly popular story-books for children (which number about forty). Her children's books are highly imaginative and full of fun. They involve their child protagonists in encounters, often magical, with worlds beyond their own: not only in literary, historical, and fantasy encounters, but also in those which raise social and political issues in terms that children can understand. Her writing for adults includes novels, poetry, short stories, plays, magazine contributions and editing, political commentary, and everything that might possibly be undertaken by a hard-up woman of letters.
His selection was resolutely unfashionable, favouring Hardy
and Betjeman
at the expense of Eliot
and Pound
. He was, however, remarkably generous in his selection of women poets (often for just one or two poems...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Marghanita Laski
The book aims at literary recuperation. Here ML
blends analysis with celebration, but she recalls her marginalised writers primarily to raise questions about the present state of writing for children. She says that her subjects...
Textual Production
Margery Lawrence
ML
's ghost stories have been frequently anthologised. They appear in, for instance, Fifty Strangest Stories Ever Told (1937), The Virago
Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century (1987), and Vampire Stories (1993).
Clute, John, and John Grant, editors. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. St Martin’s Press.
under Lawrence, Margery
Textual Features
Mary Louisa Molesworth
The Cuckoo Clock features an actual clock which adorned the nursery of MLM
's children. Its little-girl protagonist is named Griselda, surely after the famous stereotype Patient Griselda. Molesworth's Griselda is motherless; her father and...
Education
Dervla Murphy
DM
was a passionate reader as a child, devouring children's adventure books (especially series like W. E. Johns
's Biggles and Arthur Ransome
's Swallows and Amazons), rejecting classical stories like those of Louisa Alcott
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
George Orwell
This is one of the several pieces in which Orwell champions the middlebrow or non-art writing. His supreme example
Orwell, George. The Penguin Essays of George Orwell. Penguin in association with Secker and Warburg.
326
of the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when...
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under William Pember Reeves
Education
Anne Ridler
Her education began with her mother and a governess. At six she began attending a class run by the sister of another Rugby master. Later came visits to a piano teacher, and at home a...
Education
J. K. Rowling
Formative early reading included Richard Scarry
and Kenneth Grahame
's The Wind in the Willows. Joanne Rowling did not care for Enid Blyton
as a young child but acquired a taste for her later...
Intertextuality and Influence
J. K. Rowling
Joanne Rowling
wrote her first story at the age of six: Rabbit, inspired by Richard Scarry
. The Seven Cursed Diamonds, also written at primary school, owed more to E. Nesbit
. She...
Textual Production
Berta Ruck
BR
published a novel entitled The Arrant Rover, which E. Nesbit
liked best of any I have read of yours.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1924. Hutchinson.
BR
developed a close personal friendship with the writer E. Nesbit
(mother of her art-student friend Iris Bland
). They vacationed together at Grez-sur-Marne in France, and Nesbit stayed for a week with Ruck's...
Intertextuality and Influence
Berta Ruck
After finishing art school, BR
began contributing illustrations and short stories to magazines. Her early publications, not as a writer but as an illustrator, appeared in The Idler in 1903 and in the The Jabberwock...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Berta Ruck
She relates her birth and childhood in India, her years in college, and a holiday in France with E. Nesbit
and other artist friends. She also discusses her feelings about her writing career, her...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Nesbit, E., and A. L. Kellar. The Red House. Methuen, 1902.
Nesbit, E. The Secret of Kyriels. Hurst and Blackett, 1899.
Nesbit, E., and H. R. Millar. The Story of the Amulet. T. Fisher Unwin, 1906.
Nesbit, E. et al. The Story of the Treasure Seekers. T. Fisher Unwin; Frederick A. Stokes, 1899.
Nesbit, E., and H. R. Millar. The Wonderful Garden. Macmillan, 1911.
Nesbit, E., and Reginald B. Birch. The Wouldbegoods. Harper and Brothers, 1901.
Nesbit, E., and Dorothy Boulger. Twice Four. Griffith and Farran, 1891.
Nesbit, E., and H. R. Millar. Wet Magic. T. Werner Laurie, 1913.
Nesbit, E., and George Barraud. Wings and the Child. Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.
