novel) and The Phoenix

and the Carpet, featuring the “five children,” are published. J. M. Barrie produces his play Peter Pan; or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.

1905 Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess appears.

1906 The Railway Children is published, drawing on Nesbit’s childhood at Halstead Hall. The Story of the Amulet, the last of the “five children” novels, is also released, as is another adult novel, The Incomplete Amorist. Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill appears.

1907 The Enchanted Castle is published.

1908 Nesbit publishes her collected political poetry in Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism, 1883 to 1908. She introduces a new series with the publication of The House of Arden, a children’s time-travel romance. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows is published. London hosts the Olympic Games.

1909 These Little Ones, a collection of Nesbit’s stories, and Harding’s Luck, a sequel to The House of Arden, are published, as well as two adult novels, Salome and the Head (reissued as The House with No Address) and Daphne in Fitzroy Street, based on her affair with George Bernard Shaw.

1910 Nesbit publishes The Magic City, with a character (the Pretenderette) that seems to lampoon a prominent suffragette, Evelyn Sharp, to whom Nesbit writes a letter explaining why she refuses to join the movement.

1911 Nesbit publishes The Wonderful Garden, another children’s fantasy novel, and Dormant, often considered her finest adult novel. Hubert Bland’s vision deteriorates, leaving him almost blind and in the care of his wife. Barrie’s story about Peter Pan is published as a children’s novel titled Peter and Wendy, which will later be changed to Peter Pan. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden appears.

1912 Nesbit publishes The Magic World, a collection of stories.

1913 Nesbit publishes Wet Magic, a fantastical undersea adventure and her last children’s fantasy novel. The book marks the end of her association with illustrator H. R. Millar.

1914 In April, Hubert Bland dies. World War I begins.

1917 Nesbit marries Thomas Tucker, a retired tugboat operator affectionately known as “the Skipper.”

1920 A. A. Milne’s Mr. Pym Passes By is published, as is the first of Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle books.

1921 Nesbit and Tucker leave Well Hall and settle in Jesson St. Mary’s near Dymchurch.

1922 Nesbit publishes her last novel, The Lark, a romance based on the financial problems of her later years.

1924 Nesbit dies of cancer on May 4 in St. Mary’s.

1925 Five of Us—and Madeline is published. Rosamund Bland Sharp, Nesbit’s adopted daughter, compiles this collection of stories, using material provided by Nesbit’s second husband as well as excerpts from Nesbit’s memoirs originally published in The Girl’s Own Paper (1896-1897).

1966 Nesbit’s memoirs from The Girl’s Own Paper are published in book form under the title Long Ago When I was Young.

INTRODUCTION

In “The Book of Beasts,” the first story in her popular collection The Book of Dragons (1900), E. (for Edith) Nesbit tells the tale of a boy who unexpectedly inherits the throne of his country. Like his somewhat eccentric predecessor, the new king is soon drawn to the treasures of the royal library. Ignoring the advice of his counselors, the boy approaches a particularly handsome volume, The Book of Beasts, but as he gazes at the beautiful butterfly painted on the front page, the creature begins to flutter its wings and proceeds to fly out the library window. Unfortunately, the same thing occurs with the great dragon who appears on a subsequent page, and soon the beast starts to wreak havoc (though only on Saturdays) throughout the land. After the dragon carries off his rocking horse, the young king sets free a hippogriff from the The Book of Beasts, and together the boy and his white-winged companion lure the dragon to the Pebbly Waste, where the fiery creature, now deprived of the shade that keeps it from overheating, wriggles back into the book from which it came. The rocking horse is recovered but asks to live in the hippogriff’s page of the book, while the hippogriff, for its efforts, assumes the position of King’s Own Rocking Horse.

The release of fantastic creatures into the real world, at once serious and playful, exemplifies the most distinctive feature of Nesbit’s fantasies: the ceaseless interplay between the imaginary and the actual, the fluctuation between the magical world that her children enter through their books, games, and adventures, and the limiting conditions of everyday life. Unlike most of her predecessors, who situate the action of their books entirely in an imaginary realm or swiftly transport their protagonists into it, Nesbit’s fantasies are perpetually shuffling back and