Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (62 page)

The Magic
City. 1910. New York: Seastar Books, 2000. The adventures of two children inside their own toy city.

The Wonderful Garden.
1911. New York: Coward-McCann, 1959. Three children find and plant the seeds of Heart’s Desire.

The
Magic World. 1912. London: Puffin Books, 1994. A collection of twelve stories.

Wet Magic.
1913. New York: Seastar Books, 2001. Four children help the Merfolk in their struggle against the Underfolk.

Long Ago When I
Was Young. 1966. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1991. A series of childhood reminiscences originally published as “My School-Days” in
The Girl’s Own Paper,
October 1896-September 1897.

Briggs, Julia.
A Woman of
Passion: The
Life of E. Nesbit,
1858-1924. 1987. New York: New Amsterdam Books, 2000. A thorough update of Moore’s biography with edifying commentary on Nesbit’s works.

Moore, Doris Langley.
E. Nesbit: A Biography.
1933. Revised edition. London: Ernest Benn, 1967. Based on extensive interviews with and letters from Nesbit’s family and other acquaintances.

Bell, Anthea.
E. Nesbit.
1960. New York: H. Z. Walck, 1964. A succinct overview of her life and works.

Carpenter, Humphrey.
Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s
Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. An account of the Anglo-American tradition from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. The sharply critical chapter on Nesbit questions both her originality and the value of her influence.

Crouch, Marcus.
Treasure Seekers and Borrowers:
Children’s
Books in Britain,
1900-1960. London: Library Association, 1962. An informative survey that identifies Nesbit as a central figure in the modern British tradition and credits her with reshaping the family story, the fantasy novel, and the historical romance.

———
The
Nesbit Tradition:
The Children’s Novel in England,
1945-1970. London: Ernest Benn, 1972. An overview that emphasizes Nesbit’s enduring influence on English children’s fiction.

Knoepflmacher, U. C. “Of Babylands and Babylons: E. Nesbit and the Reclamation of the Fairy Tale.”
Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature
6:2 (Fall 1987), pp. 299-325. A probing essay that uses Nesbit’s autobiographical writings (primarily
Long Ago When I Was Young)
to explore some of the psychological conflicts in her major fiction. Lochhead, Marion.
Renaissance of Wonder: The Fantasy Worlds of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, E. Nesbit and Others.
San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977. A historical survey with a chapter devoted to Nesbit.

Manlove, Colin N.
From Alice to Harry Potter: Children’s Fantasy in England.
Christchurch, New Zealand: Cybereditions, 2003. An illuminating tour of the fantasy tradition from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

Nelson, Claudia.
Boys Will Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children’s Fiction,
1857-1917. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991. An analysis of the sanctification of childhood and related changes in gender ideals in the fiction of the era.

Nicholson, Mervyn. “What C. S. Lewis Took from E. Nesbit.”
Children’s Literature Association Quarterly
16 (1991), pp. 16-22. An essay that examines the influence of Nesbit’s fantasies on the plot, character, and narrative voice of Lewis’s
The Chronicles of Narnia,
with an analysis of the sections most heavily indebted to her works.

Nikolajeva, Maria.
Children’s Literature Comes of Age: Toward a New Aesthetic.
New York: Garland, 1996. A sophisticated and wide-ranging study that identifies Nesbit as “the key figure of modern fantasy” (p. 159) and highlights her appropriation of other literature from traditional folktales to the novels of H. G. Wells.

Prickett, Stephen.
Victorian
Fantasy. Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester, 1979. A standard work on the period that concludes with a chapter on Kipling and Nesbit.

Streatfeild, Noel.
Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and Her Children’s Books.
New York: Abelard Schumann, 1958. A book-length appreciation by a well-known author of children’s literature.