Edith Nesbit

E NESBIT
1858 - 1924

For someone who wrote such sympathetic and lasting evocations of Victorian/Edwardian middle-class childhood as The Railway Children, The Wouldbegoods and Five Children and It, Edith Nesbit was also an ardent early socialist, a founder of the Fabian Society and a chain smoking fashion setter of the political/literary avant garde.
Much of her early personal life, especially her lost father, financial struggles and migratory childhood, can be seen as strong echoes in her stories and she remains one of the most accessible and honest authorial voices of her era.

Biography and studies

The Spartacus Teaching History Online site has an encyclopaedic biography, and includes extensive links to Nesbit's literary and political activities.
The Modernist Journals Project at Brown University (US) puts her in the context of early modernist literature and politics
This personal page, with actress Jenny Agutter (involved in the 1967 TV series and 1970 and 1999 movies of The Railway Children) as patron, has biographical information and links to analytical and current material.
These support pages to PBS TV's Masterpiece series have essays and biographical details, particularly on The Railway Children.
The French ricochet-jeunes site has information about Nesbit and his stories as well as versions and adaptations (and quite a number of other historical authors)

Texts

Indiana University's Victorian Women Writers Project Library has 15 Nesbit novels and stories available.
Forgotten Futures uses the full texts of several of the major novels and stories as the basis for role playing fantasy games.
The Baldwin Project aims to make out-of-copyright classics freely available. More Nesbit editions are planned.
The Classic Bookshelf has the main novels in an adjustable online format.
The Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania has links to most available online versions including the Gutenberg texts.

And lastly, why not do a bit of searching. The ubiquitous Google or Alta Vista build good results from your search. Try "edith nesbit" or "e nesbit" as a name, as well as descriptors such as children's literature, "railway children", would-be-good or fantasy in various combinations.

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