E. Nesbit

Gore Vidal once wrote, “[Other than Lewis Carroll] E. Nesbit is the best of the English fabulists who wrote about children”, and he blamed her books’ lack of popularity in the United States on librarians, whom he described as “brisk tweedy ladies whose interests are mechanical rather than imaginative”. This might have been true in 1964, when Vidal wrote his essay for The New York Times, but I suspect that most modern librarians are very interested in well-written children’s fantasy, and E. Nesbit’s books still aren’t flying off the shelves. (That Gore Vidal, what a charmer... still, A.S. Byatt is probably glad to know that she’s not the first author to stick her foot in her mouth via an essay in the Times.)

The tone of Nesbit’s books is undeniably dated—I think that modern readers expect a more clearly defined emotional life from their heroes and heroines—but they’re still fantastic exercises in imagination. She loved writing about children using logic to control magic, usually with disastrous results.

Note: Nesbit was a very unconventional person. She was a founding member of the Fabian Society, she had an “open marriage” with her husband, Hubert Bland, and she wasn’t afraid to express her individuality through her appearance and manners (i.e., she only wore wool and smoked like a chimney). I can handle all of that… but she allegedly also had an affair with George Bernard Shaw, which I totally fail to comprehend. Why would she sleep with Shaw? Why would anyone sleep with Shaw?

Aftertaste:
None.

Availability:
Everywhere.

Other Recommendations:
Anything by Edward Eager

Anything by George MacDonald