Authors and Books
for Children

Five Children and More: Edith Nesbit Etexts

Author Edith Nesbit led an unconventional life as a prominent socialist and political activist in London. Though she also wrote for an adult audience, she is most remembered as a popular children's author.

Nesbit was born on August 15, 1858, in London, the youngest of six children. After her father died, the family moved to the continent, where she was educated in France and Germany; in 1872 the Nesbits returned to England. She married Hubert Bland in 1880 and had three children; she also adopted Bland's illegitimate children. Bland died in 1914; she later married Thomas Tucker, in 1917.


A founding member of the Fabian Society in the mid-1880s, she was a political activist, along with such other notable literary figures as H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Nesbit died on May 4, 1924, possibly from lung cancer, at Jesson St. Mary's in Kent, England.

Among her most familiar works are the Psammaed books, which include Five Children and It, the Bastable family books, and The Railway Children; these are all available online.

Various other works by Edith Nesbit, for both children and adults, are also freely available on the Web.

Bastables
#1 The Story of the Treasure-Seekers, 1899
#2 The Wouldbegoods, 1901

Psammaed
#1 Five Children and It, 1902
#2 The Phoenix and the Carpet, 1904
#3 The Story of the Amulet, 1906

Additional works on the Web by Edith Nesbit
Lays and Legends, 1892
"Man-size in Marble," from Grim Tales, 1893
"Uncle Abraham's Romance," 1893
A Pomander of Verse, 1895
In Homespun, 1896
My School-Days (original magazine serial version), 1896-1897
Songs of Love and Empire, 1898
The Seven Dragons and Other Stories, 1899, 1900, 1925
The Red House, 1902
The Rainbow and the Rose, 1905
The Incomplete Amorist, 1906
The Railway Children, 1906
The Enchanted Castle, 1907
Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare, 1907
Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism, 1883-1908, 1908
These Little Ones, 1909
The Magic World, 1912
Wet Magic, 1913
Many Voices, 1922