Writing for a living
Nesbit was born in London and educated in England and continental Europe. She married Hubert Bland in 1880 and carried much of the responsibility for earning the family’s income through writing. Commercial fiction and stories supported a household marked by financial pressures and complicated personal relationships. Poetry remained an important literary ambition.
She and Bland were associated with the founding of the Fabian Society in 1884. Success with children’s books came later, including The Story of the Treasure Seekers, Five Children and It and The Railway Children. After Bland’s death she married Thomas Terry Tucker. The ease of her conversational storytelling grew out of a career sustained through several kinds of literary work.
Magic within ordinary life
The Magic World collects twelve tales in which fairy-tale possibilities intrude into familiar situations. Its contents range from accidental magic to transformations and encounters with magicians. The opening Cat-hood of Maurice makes a boy’s treatment of an animal the starting point of a change in perspective.
Maurice’s insistence that he did not mean to be cruel is tested against the discomfort of the creature he has handled. Magic gives the dispute bodily consequences, while the narrator’s direct address keeps humour close to argument. H. R. Millar and Spencer Pryse are separately credited with illustrations in the retained book. Their images accompany Nesbit’s mixture of domestic observation and impossible events.
