How E Nesbit Helped Create Modern Children's Literature

 by Attish Das

Edith Nesbit, more commonly known as E. Nesbit, was an English author and poet, who published books for children such as The Railway Children, Five Children and It and The Phoenix and the Carpet. She, in total, wrote 60 books. She was born on the 15th August, 1858, in Kennington, Surrey, now Greater London, England and sadly died on 4th May, 1924, in New Romney, Kent at the age of 65.

She started her career in writing by publishing poems, and before E. Nesbit was 20 years old, the magazine ‘Good Words’ printed her poem called ‘Under the Trees’. Then later she moved onto stories such as the trio in the Psammead series, Five Children and it, The Phoenix and The Carpet and The Story of the Amulet.

Nesbit created an innovative body of work that combined realistic contemporary children in real-world settings with magical objects (which would now be classed as contemporary fantasy) and adventures and sometimes travel to fantastic worlds. In doing so, she influenced directly or indirectly many subsequent writers, including PL Travers (author of Mary Poppins), Edward Eager, Diana Wynne Jones and JK Rowling. CS Lewis was influenced by her in writing the Narnia series and mentions the Bastable children in The Magician's Nephew. Michael Moorcock later wrote a series of Steampunk novels with an adult Oswald Bastable of The Treasure Seekers as lead character. In 2012, Jacqueline Wilson wrote a sequel to the Psammead trilogy entitled Four Children and It; Kate Saunders, to mark the centenary of the First World War in 2014, wrote a sequel, Five Children on the Western Front.