Five Children and It : Introduction and background:


“The author with whom I identify most is E. Nesbit. She did some great, funny fairy tales.” JK Rowling


E Nesbit’s timeless classic FIVE CHILDREN AND IT was first published in 1902. Its combination of magic with the everyday trials of childhood has entranced readers for more than 100 years.

Edith Nesbit was born on 19th August 1858. Her father was a successful schoolmaster but died when Edith was just six years old. Her mother nonetheless found the money to educate her daughter in France. She was a mischievous, tomboyish child. At the age of nineteen Edith met Hubert Bland, and married him when she discovered she was pregnant. They became co-founder members of the socialist Fabian Society.


Their household was a centre of the socialist and literary circles of the times. The chaos of their Bohemian home was regularly increased by the presence of numerous friends, including George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells. But the marriage was unhappy. Bland was a philanderer and incapable of making a living. Alice Hoatson, the assistant secretary of the Fabian Society, moved in with Edith and Hubert. The following year Alice gave birth to Hubert’s baby. Apart from their own five children, Edith also raised two adoptive children.

E Nesbit turned late to children’s writing to support her children, after a number of years as a successful writer of short pieces for adult magazines. Thanks to her success, she was approached by a popular children’s magazine of the time to write pieces about her childhood. When Edith turned from describing the literal facts of her childhood to capturing in fictional form the happy and relaxed atmosphere she had known as a girl, the result was a series of children’s books which have remained firm favourites and bestsellers for decades.


One of her most admired abilities as a writer is the combination – often with more than a pinch of humour – of a real-life situation with elements of magical fantasy. FIVE CHILDREN AND IT is perhaps the most famous of her books to display this Narnia-like combination.

After the death of Hubert Bland in 1914, Edith married Thomas Tucker, an engineer. She continued to write children’s books and had published forty-four novels before her death on 4th May 1924.