by Edith Nesbit
Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright Page
EDITH NESBIT
THE WORLD OF EDITH NESBIT AND THE ENCHANTED CASTLE AND FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
Introduction
FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
CHAPTER I - BEAUTIFUL AS THE DAY
CHAPTER II - GOLDEN GUINEAS
CHAPTER III - BEING WANTED
CHAPTER IV - WINGS
CHAPTER V - No WINGS
CHAPTER VI - A CASTLE AND NO DINNER
CHAPTER VII - A SIEGE AND BED
CHAPTER VIII - BIGGER THAN THE BAKER’S BOY
CHAPTER IX - GROWN UP
CHAPTER X - SCALPS
CHAPTER XI (AND LAST) - THE LAST WISH
THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III - Those of my readers who have gone about much with an invisible ...
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
ENDNOTES
INSPIRED BY THE ENCHANTED CASTLE AND FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF THE ENCHANTED CASTLE and FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
The children stood round the hole in a ring, looking at the creature they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail’s eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat’s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider’s and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey’s.
(from Five Children and It, page 17)
I daresay you have often thought what you would do if you had three wishes given you, and have despised the old man and his wife in the black-pudding story, and felt certain that if you had the chance you could think of three really useful wishes without a moment’s hesitation. These children had often talked this matter over, but, now the chance had suddenly come to them, they could not make up their minds.
(from Five Children and It, pages 20-21)
“I was always generous from a child,” said the Sand-fairy. “I’ve spent the whole of my waking hours in giving. But one thing I won’t give—that’s advice.” (from Five Children and It, page 77)
“Friends, Romans, countrymen—and women—we found a Sammyadd. We have had wishes. We’ve had wings, and being beautiful as the day—ugh!—that was pretty jolly beastly if you like—and wealth and castles, and that rotten gipsy business with the Lamb. But we’re no forrader. We haven’t really got anything worth having for our wishes.”
(from Five Children and It, page 126)
“Why, don’t you see, if you told grown-ups I should have no peace of my life. They’d get hold of me, and they wouldn’t wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things; and the scientific people would hit on some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they’d ask for a graduated income-tax, and old-age pensions and manhood suffrage, and free secondary education, and dull things like that; and get them, and keep them, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy.”
(from Five Children and It, page 182)
And they were at school in a little town in the West of England—the boys at one school, of course, and the girl at another, because the sensible habit of having boys and girls at the same school is not yet as common as I hope it will be some day.
(from The Enchanted Castle, page 191)
“Well, don’t let’s spoil the show with any silly old not believing,” said Gerald with decision. “I’m going to believe in magic as hard as I can. This is an enchanted garden, and that’s an enchanted castle, and I’m jolly well going to explore.” (from The Enchanted Castle, page 204)
There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs for ever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets, and the like, almost anything may happen.
(from The Enchanted Castle, page 345)
The moonbeam slants more and more; now it touches the far end of the stone, now it draws nearer and nearer to the middle of it, now at last it touches the very heart and centre of that central stone. And then it is as though a spring were touched, a fountain of light released. Everything changes. Or, rather, everything is revealed. There are no more secrets. The plan of the world seems plain, like an easy sum that one writes in big figures on a child’s slate.
(from The Enchanted Castle, page 409)
It is all very well for all of them to pretend that the whole of this story is my own invention: facts are facts, and you can’t explain them away.
(from The Enchanted Castle, page 412)
Published by Barnes & Noble Books
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Five Children and It was first published in 1902.
The Enchanted Castle was first published in 1907.
Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new
Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2005 by Sanford Schwartz.
Note on Edith Nesbit, The World of Edith Nesbit,
Inspired by The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It,
and Comments & Questions
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The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It
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EDITH NESBIT
Edith Nesbit, a pioneer of twentieth-century children’s fiction, was one of the major authors of the “Golden Age” of children’s literature, which included Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Louisa May Alcott, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. She was born in 1858, the youngest of six children. Her childhood was disrupted in 1862 by the sudden death of her father, the head of a small agricultural college in South London. For several years, Edith’s mother ran the college on her own, but when Edith’s sister Mary contracted tuberculosis, Mrs. Nesbit began moving the family to various locations in England and France in an ultimately futile effort to find a suitable climate. The energetic and sometimes mischievous Edith was sent off intermittently to boarding s
chools, where she was often unhappy. At other times, she was allowed to roam freely through the countryside around the homes the family rented. She began publishing poetry in her teens, and though her lasting reputation is based on her children’s books, she aspired to become a major poet throughout her life.
In 1880 Edith married the dashing and politically active Hubert Bland and soon afterward gave birth to their first child. Four years later the couple joined Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and several others as founding members of the Fabian Society, an influential circle of progressive intellectuals who would play a major role in the formation of social policy over the coming decades; Bland edited the society’s journal. Since he was an uncertain breadwinner, Edith began to support the family by her writing. For nearly two decades she composed (in addition to her verse) a multitude of essays, short stories, adult novels, and tales for children, often working at top speed to keep the family afloat. At the same time, she adopted the image of the so-called New Woman, cutting her hair short, wearing loose-fitting “aesthetic” clothing, and assuming what was then the exclusively male prerogative of smoking cigarettes. Tall, athletic, and by all accounts highly attractive, she also responded to her husband’s incessant womanizing by conducting affairs of her own, including a short-lived romance with George Bernard Shaw.
After twenty years of prolific publication and modest critical success, Nesbit finally achieved acclaim with the release of her first children’s novel, The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), a family adventure story. It was the start of a remarkable period of creative activity. The Wouldbegoods, a sequel to her first novel, appeared in 1901, followed by The New Treasure Seekers (1904). During this time, she also wrote her first fantasy novel, Five Children and It (1902) and employed the same “five children” in two sequels, The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and The Story of the Amulet (1906). In 1906 she published one of her most enduring family adventure tales, The Railway Children, and in the following year The Enchanted Castle (1907), which many regard as her most mature work of children’s fiction. Inspired by H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), she then produced two time-travel romances for children, The House of Arden (1908) and its sequel, Harding’s Luck (1909), and several other works of fantasy—The Magic City (1910), The Wonderful Garden (1911), The Magic World (1912), and Wet Magic (1913). Her output declined dramatically after Hubert’s death in 1914. At the time of Edith Nesbit’s death, on May 4, 1924, her literary reputation had ebbed, but it recovered in the 1930s, and ever since she has been regarded as one of the seminal voices of modern children’s literature.
THE WORLD OF EDITH NESBIT AND THE ENCHANTED CASTLE AND FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
1858 Edith Nesbit is born on August 15 in Kennington, South Lon- don, the sixth and youngest child of John Collis and Sarah Green (nee Alderton) Nesbit. Her family lives on the campus of an agricultural school founded by Edith’s paternal grandfather; her father is the headmaster and teaches chemistry.
1862 In March, John Nesbit dies at the age of forty-three, and Edith’s mother takes over the running of the college.
1863 Charles Kingsley’s pioneering work of children’s fantasy The Water-Babies is published; along with subsequent books by Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald, it marks the beginning of a golden era of children’s fantasy and of children’s literature in general.
1865 Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland appears.
1866 Edith’s sister Mary contracts tuberculosis, and the family moves to the seaside in search of a healthier climate. Edith is briefly enrolled in boarding school, where she is bullied.
1867 Sarah Nesbit takes Mary and two of the other children, including Edith, to the warmer climate of France. The Nesbits travel throughout the country, never remaining in one place for long.
1868 The first part of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women appears.
1870 The Nesbit family moves to a Brittany farmhouse; the children are allowed to roam freely. A reluctant Edith is sent to various boarding schools and at one point a convent in Germany. Sarah Nesbit takes Mary back to London, where Mary becomes engaged to Philip Bourke Marston, a poet who is a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle.
1871 In November, Mary Nesbit dies. George MacDonald publishes At the Back of the North Wind. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There appears.
1872 The Nesbits settle in Kent, renting Halstead Hall, where the children find many diversions, including railroad tracks that run through the property. Edith enters a period of great happiness. MacDonald’s most enduring book for children, The Princess and the Goblin, is released.
1875 Edith’s first published poems appear in a local paper, the Sunday Magazine. The family moves back to London.
1876 Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
1877 Edith meets Hubert Bland, a young writer and political activist.
1880 Hubert Bland and Edith Nesbit are married. Their first child, Paul, is born two months later.
1881 A second child, Iris, is born.
1882 Nesbit meets Alice Hoatson, who will have an ongoing affair with Bland.
1883 Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson publishes Treasure Island. George MacDonald publishes The Princess and Curdie.
1884 Bland and Nesbit help found the Fabian Society, a circle of progressive intellectuals committed to gradual social change through democratic reform. Nesbit is invited to write pamphlets for the group. The society attracts notable figures, including writers George Bernard Shaw and, later, H. G. Wells. Nesbit also adopts the image of the so-called New Woman of the late nineteenth century: She cuts her hair short, smokes cigarettes, and abandons her corset. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published.
1885 With Bland, Nesbit coauthors the novel The Prophet’s Mantle, a conventional romance plot set against a background of politics informed by their acquaintance with Russian émigrés living in London. When writing together, the couple often uses the alias “Fabian Bland.” The couple’s third child, Fabian, is born.
1886 Bland edits the Fabian Society journal, Today. His daughter Rosamund is born to Alice Hoatson; Nesbit agrees to raise the child as her own and allows Hoatson to move into the Bland-Nesbit home as a housekeeper. Nesbit has a brief affair with George Bernard Shaw. Lays and Legends, Nesbit’s collection of
poems, is released to critical success. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy is published.
1892 Nesbit’s first long work for children, a book-length narrative poem entitled The Voyage of Columbus, is published.
1893 Nesbit publishes two collections of horror stories: Something Wrong and Grim Tales; the latter includes “Man-size in Marble,” one of her most popular tales.
1894 Rudyard Kipling publishes The Jungle Book, a collection of animal stories. Robert Louis Stevenson dies.
1895 H. G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, his first major work of science fiction.
1896 Nesbit begins to serialize her childhood reminiscences in The Girl’s Own Paper.
1898 H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds and Kenneth Grahame’s Dream Days are published.
1899 Nesbit begins her long collaboration with illustrator H. R. Millar when her dragon stories are published in The Strand Magazine. She also publishes Pussy and Doggy Tales, The Secret of Kyriels, an adult Gothic novel, and The Story of the Treasure Seekers, the first of the Bastable novels, with illustrations by Gordon Brown and Lewis Baumer. The success of The Treasure Seekers allows Nesbit and Bland to move into Well Hall, a spacious manor home. Bland’s second child with Alice Hoatson, christened John and nicknamed “The Lamb,” is born; Nesbit adopts and raises him.
1900 Nesbit publishes her dragon stories in the collection The Book of Dragons. L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Beatrix Potter publishes The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
1901 The Wouldbegoods, another Bastable novel, is published, as is Nesbit’s Nine Unlikely Tales for Children (later reprinted as Where
youwanttogo and Other Unlikely Tales). Kipling’s Kim appears.
1902 Nesbit publishes Five Children and It, her first fantasy novel. She meets H. G. Wells, an important influence on her fiction and for several years a controversial and outspoken member of the Fabian Society. Nesbit’s adult novel The Red House and The Revolt of the Toys, and What Comes of Quarreling are published. Kipling’s Just So Stories is released.
1904 The New Treasure Seekers (another Bastable 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.
