author - "E. Nesbit"
He was waiting for her, he had been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other--and far away to the south-west the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite like a country lane, for it had a pavement and lamp-posts, but it was not a bad place for a meeting all the same: and farther up, towards the cemetery, it was really quite rural, and almost pretty, especially in twilight. But twilight had long deepened into the night, and still he waited. He loved her, and he was engaged to be married to her, with the complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been consulted. And this half-clandestine meeting was tonight to take the place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview-because a certain rich uncle was visiting at her house, and her mother was not the woman to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle, who might "go off" any day, a match so deeply ineligible as hers with him.
So he waited for her, and the chill of an unusually severe May evening entered into his bones.
The policeman
nough to tease.
'Look here,' said Anthea. 'Let's have a palaver.' This worddated from the awful day when Cyril had carelessly wished thatthere were Red Indians in England--and there had been. The wordbrought back memories of last summer holidays and everyonegroaned; they thought of the white house with the beautifultangled garden--late roses, asters, marigold, sweet mignonette,and feathery asparagus--of the wilderness which someone had oncemeant to make into an orchard, but which was now, as Father said,'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of babycherry-trees'. They thought of the view across the valley, wherethe lime-kilns looked like Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, andthey thought of their own sandpit, with its fringe of yellowygrasses and pale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the littleholes in the cliff that were the little sand-martins' littlefront doors. And they thought of the free fresh air smelling ofthyme and sweetbriar, and the scent of the wood-smoke from theco
ly a screw went mad,
And then the boiler burst!
With gloomy face he picked it up
And took it to his Mother,
Though even he could not suppose
That she could make another;
For those who perished on the line
He did not seem to care,
His engine being more to him
Than all the people there.
And now you see the reason why
Our Peter has been ill:
He soothes his soul with pigeon-pie
His gnawing grief to kill.
He wraps himself in blankets warm
And sleeps in bed till late,
Determined thus to overcome
His miserable fate.
And if his eyes are rather red,
His cold must just excuse it:
Offer him pie; you may be sure
He never will refuse it.
Father had been away in the country for three or four days. All Peter's hopes for the curing of his afflicted Engine were now fixed on his Father, for Father was most wonderfully clever with his fingers. He could mend all sorts of things. He had often acted as veterinary surgeon to the wooden rocking-horse; once he had saved its life when all huma
up all these years to get his crown, and everything!"
And wise people shook their heads and foretold a decline in the National Love of Sport. And, indeed, soccer was not at all popular for some time afterward.
Lionel did his best to be a good King during the week, and the people were beginning to forgive him for letting the Dragon out of the book. "After all," they said, "soccer is a dangerous game, and perhaps it is wise to discourage it."
Popular opinion held that the Soccer Players, being tough and hard, had disagreed with the Dragon so much that he had gone away to some place where they only play cats' cradle and games that do not make you hard and tough.
All the same, Parliament met on the Saturday afternoon, a convenient time, for most of the Members would be free to attend, to consider the Dragon. But unfortunately the Dragon, who had only been asleep, woke up because it was Saturday, and he considered the Parliament, and afterwards there were not any Members left, so they t
h all fringed with ferns and creepers. They passed through the arch into a deep, narrow gully whose banks were of stones, moss-covered; and in the crannies grew more ferns and long grasses. Trees growing on the top of the bank arched across, and the sunlight came through in changing patches of brightness, turning the gully to a roofed corridor of goldy-green. The path, which was of greeny-grey flagstones where heaps of leaves had drifted, sloped steeply down, and at the end of it was another round arch, quite dark inside, above which rose rocks and grass and bushes.
"It's like the outside of a railway tunnel," said James.
"It's the entrance to the enchanted castle," said Kathleen. "Let's blow the horns."
"Dry up!" said Gerald. "The bold Captain, reproving the silly chatter of his subordinates ,"
"I like that!" said Jimmy, indignant.
"I thought you would," resumed Gerald "of his subordinates, bade them advance with caution and in silence, because after all there might be some
picture, and gazed into those grey-green eyes till tears of passionate happiness filled my own.
"Oh! my dear, my dear, how shall I pass the hours till I hold you again?"
No thought, then, of my whole life's completion and consummation being a dream.
I staggered up to my room, fell across my bed, and slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I awoke it was high noon. Mildred and her mother were coming to lunch.
I remembered, at one o'clock, Mildred coming and her existence.
Now indeed the dream began.
With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from her, I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial phrases all seemed to be someone else's. My voice sounded like an echo; my heart was not there.
Still, the situation was not intolerable, until the hour when afternoon tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and mother kept the conversational pot boiling with
Description
The Railway Children is Edith Nesbit’s most well-known and well-loved book for young readers. Since its first book publication in 1906, it has been made into movies, radio plays and television series several times, dramatised in the theatre, performed in actual railway stations, and even turned into a musical.
It tells the story of three children: Roberta, Peter and Phyllis, who with their mother are forced to leave their comfortable suburban home and go to live in a small cottage in the country, after their father is taken away from them for what at first seem inexplicable reasons. They live there very quietly, not going to school, whilst their mother writes stories and poems to earn a small income. The children’s lives, however, are greatly enlivened by their proximity to a nearby railway line and station, in which they take great interest. They befriend the railway staff and have several adventures in which they demonstrate considerable initiative and courage.
One unusual topic touched on by the book is the then-current Russia-Japan war, which divided opinion in England. Nesbit was clearly opposed to the actions of the Tsarist government of Russia, and she introduces into the story a Tolstoy-like Russian writer who has escaped from a prison camp in Siberia, to which he was condemned for publishing a book espousing his liberal views.
Description
The Enchanted Castle is a novel for young readers by Edith Nesbit, who was writing in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era in Britain. As in her other children’s books, it begins in the everyday world but quickly brings in the fantastical and magical. A large part of the delight of Nesbit’s books is that her children behave in quite ordinary ways, getting into scrapes, getting dirty and their clothes torn, making decisions which seem right to them at the time but which are generally wrong-headed. It’s the contrast between the ordinariness of the children and the magical adventures they become involved in which makes the books so charming.
The Enchanted Castle was originally serialized in The Strand Magazine alongside stories by Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. The first book edition was published in 1907.
In the story, Kathleen and her brothers Gerald and Jimmy find a way into a remarkable garden designed to create a Palladian landscape, full of statues and pseudo-Classical temples and buildings. It is not long before they come across a sleeping Princess. They wake her, and she introduces them to an item of real magical value, a ring which makes its wearer invisible. But once on, the ring won’t come off! “Those of my readers who have gone about much with an invisible companion will not need to be told how awkward the whole business is,” comments the author, which is indicative of the simple and direct language she uses, and the humor of the books. Even the invisibility ring, however, is not quite as simple as it seems; and many interesting and amusing adventures follow.
Description
Harding’s Luck, published in 1909, is the sequel to The House of Arden by E. Nesbit.
Rather darker and more serious in tone than the previous book, this novel is set in England’s Edwardian era, when there was no government-supported welfare and the poor still sometimes starved to death. It centers on young Dickie Harding, a poor, lame orphan boy who is enticed to run away with a disreputable tramp, Mr. Beale. Beale intends to use him to help carry out burglaries (a plot device not dissimilar to that of Oliver Twist). Nevertheless Beale becomes a substitute father-figure to Dickie and a strong mutual affection develops.
The story then introduces a magical device which sends Dickie back in time to the early reign of King James I, where he inhabits the body of the son of the lord of a castle. Despite this new, very comfortable existence, where he is a member of a rich, respected family and no longer lame, Dickie selflessly forces himself to return to his present day because of a promise he had made to Beale and a desire to help Beale lead a more honest life.
Nesbit was a member of the socially-progressive Fabian Society and a friend of H. G. Wells, and it shows in her stories. While Harding’s Luck is primarily a children’s novel, it touches on many deeper themes and comments seriously on the social conditions of the author’s time.
Description
Edith Nesbit was a popular children’s author of the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras in Britain. Though she was writing more than a century ago, her books nevertheless remain popular and are generally still in print.
The House of Arden was published in 1908. Like her other, perhaps better known tales, such as Five Children and It, the story takes quite ordinary children of the time and plunges them into fantastical adventures.
In this book, two children, with the interesting Saxon names of Edred and Elfrida, aged 10 and 12 respectively, discover that due to the death of a distant relative, young Edred is now Lord of Arden. The estate consists of not much more than a little money, a crumbling castle, and an attached house. An old retainer tells them of a legend regarding the Lord of Arden and a buried treasure. Naturally they are eager to locate the treasure, which may help them restore the castle. They discover a way to summon up the mascot of the House, a white mole or “mouldiwarp,” who enables them to travel back through time in search of the treasure.
He was waiting for her, he had been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other--and far away to the south-west the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite like a country lane, for it had a pavement and lamp-posts, but it was not a bad place for a meeting all the same: and farther up, towards the cemetery, it was really quite rural, and almost pretty, especially in twilight. But twilight had long deepened into the night, and still he waited. He loved her, and he was engaged to be married to her, with the complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been consulted. And this half-clandestine meeting was tonight to take the place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview-because a certain rich uncle was visiting at her house, and her mother was not the woman to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle, who might "go off" any day, a match so deeply ineligible as hers with him.
So he waited for her, and the chill of an unusually severe May evening entered into his bones.
The policeman
nough to tease.
'Look here,' said Anthea. 'Let's have a palaver.' This worddated from the awful day when Cyril had carelessly wished thatthere were Red Indians in England--and there had been. The wordbrought back memories of last summer holidays and everyonegroaned; they thought of the white house with the beautifultangled garden--late roses, asters, marigold, sweet mignonette,and feathery asparagus--of the wilderness which someone had oncemeant to make into an orchard, but which was now, as Father said,'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of babycherry-trees'. They thought of the view across the valley, wherethe lime-kilns looked like Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, andthey thought of their own sandpit, with its fringe of yellowygrasses and pale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the littleholes in the cliff that were the little sand-martins' littlefront doors. And they thought of the free fresh air smelling ofthyme and sweetbriar, and the scent of the wood-smoke from theco
ly a screw went mad,
And then the boiler burst!
With gloomy face he picked it up
And took it to his Mother,
Though even he could not suppose
That she could make another;
For those who perished on the line
He did not seem to care,
His engine being more to him
Than all the people there.
And now you see the reason why
Our Peter has been ill:
He soothes his soul with pigeon-pie
His gnawing grief to kill.
He wraps himself in blankets warm
And sleeps in bed till late,
Determined thus to overcome
His miserable fate.
And if his eyes are rather red,
His cold must just excuse it:
Offer him pie; you may be sure
He never will refuse it.
Father had been away in the country for three or four days. All Peter's hopes for the curing of his afflicted Engine were now fixed on his Father, for Father was most wonderfully clever with his fingers. He could mend all sorts of things. He had often acted as veterinary surgeon to the wooden rocking-horse; once he had saved its life when all huma
up all these years to get his crown, and everything!"
And wise people shook their heads and foretold a decline in the National Love of Sport. And, indeed, soccer was not at all popular for some time afterward.
Lionel did his best to be a good King during the week, and the people were beginning to forgive him for letting the Dragon out of the book. "After all," they said, "soccer is a dangerous game, and perhaps it is wise to discourage it."
Popular opinion held that the Soccer Players, being tough and hard, had disagreed with the Dragon so much that he had gone away to some place where they only play cats' cradle and games that do not make you hard and tough.
All the same, Parliament met on the Saturday afternoon, a convenient time, for most of the Members would be free to attend, to consider the Dragon. But unfortunately the Dragon, who had only been asleep, woke up because it was Saturday, and he considered the Parliament, and afterwards there were not any Members left, so they t
h all fringed with ferns and creepers. They passed through the arch into a deep, narrow gully whose banks were of stones, moss-covered; and in the crannies grew more ferns and long grasses. Trees growing on the top of the bank arched across, and the sunlight came through in changing patches of brightness, turning the gully to a roofed corridor of goldy-green. The path, which was of greeny-grey flagstones where heaps of leaves had drifted, sloped steeply down, and at the end of it was another round arch, quite dark inside, above which rose rocks and grass and bushes.
"It's like the outside of a railway tunnel," said James.
"It's the entrance to the enchanted castle," said Kathleen. "Let's blow the horns."
"Dry up!" said Gerald. "The bold Captain, reproving the silly chatter of his subordinates ,"
"I like that!" said Jimmy, indignant.
"I thought you would," resumed Gerald "of his subordinates, bade them advance with caution and in silence, because after all there might be some
picture, and gazed into those grey-green eyes till tears of passionate happiness filled my own.
"Oh! my dear, my dear, how shall I pass the hours till I hold you again?"
No thought, then, of my whole life's completion and consummation being a dream.
I staggered up to my room, fell across my bed, and slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I awoke it was high noon. Mildred and her mother were coming to lunch.
I remembered, at one o'clock, Mildred coming and her existence.
Now indeed the dream began.
With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from her, I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial phrases all seemed to be someone else's. My voice sounded like an echo; my heart was not there.
Still, the situation was not intolerable, until the hour when afternoon tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and mother kept the conversational pot boiling with
Description
The Railway Children is Edith Nesbit’s most well-known and well-loved book for young readers. Since its first book publication in 1906, it has been made into movies, radio plays and television series several times, dramatised in the theatre, performed in actual railway stations, and even turned into a musical.
It tells the story of three children: Roberta, Peter and Phyllis, who with their mother are forced to leave their comfortable suburban home and go to live in a small cottage in the country, after their father is taken away from them for what at first seem inexplicable reasons. They live there very quietly, not going to school, whilst their mother writes stories and poems to earn a small income. The children’s lives, however, are greatly enlivened by their proximity to a nearby railway line and station, in which they take great interest. They befriend the railway staff and have several adventures in which they demonstrate considerable initiative and courage.
One unusual topic touched on by the book is the then-current Russia-Japan war, which divided opinion in England. Nesbit was clearly opposed to the actions of the Tsarist government of Russia, and she introduces into the story a Tolstoy-like Russian writer who has escaped from a prison camp in Siberia, to which he was condemned for publishing a book espousing his liberal views.
Description
The Enchanted Castle is a novel for young readers by Edith Nesbit, who was writing in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era in Britain. As in her other children’s books, it begins in the everyday world but quickly brings in the fantastical and magical. A large part of the delight of Nesbit’s books is that her children behave in quite ordinary ways, getting into scrapes, getting dirty and their clothes torn, making decisions which seem right to them at the time but which are generally wrong-headed. It’s the contrast between the ordinariness of the children and the magical adventures they become involved in which makes the books so charming.
The Enchanted Castle was originally serialized in The Strand Magazine alongside stories by Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. The first book edition was published in 1907.
In the story, Kathleen and her brothers Gerald and Jimmy find a way into a remarkable garden designed to create a Palladian landscape, full of statues and pseudo-Classical temples and buildings. It is not long before they come across a sleeping Princess. They wake her, and she introduces them to an item of real magical value, a ring which makes its wearer invisible. But once on, the ring won’t come off! “Those of my readers who have gone about much with an invisible companion will not need to be told how awkward the whole business is,” comments the author, which is indicative of the simple and direct language she uses, and the humor of the books. Even the invisibility ring, however, is not quite as simple as it seems; and many interesting and amusing adventures follow.
Description
Harding’s Luck, published in 1909, is the sequel to The House of Arden by E. Nesbit.
Rather darker and more serious in tone than the previous book, this novel is set in England’s Edwardian era, when there was no government-supported welfare and the poor still sometimes starved to death. It centers on young Dickie Harding, a poor, lame orphan boy who is enticed to run away with a disreputable tramp, Mr. Beale. Beale intends to use him to help carry out burglaries (a plot device not dissimilar to that of Oliver Twist). Nevertheless Beale becomes a substitute father-figure to Dickie and a strong mutual affection develops.
The story then introduces a magical device which sends Dickie back in time to the early reign of King James I, where he inhabits the body of the son of the lord of a castle. Despite this new, very comfortable existence, where he is a member of a rich, respected family and no longer lame, Dickie selflessly forces himself to return to his present day because of a promise he had made to Beale and a desire to help Beale lead a more honest life.
Nesbit was a member of the socially-progressive Fabian Society and a friend of H. G. Wells, and it shows in her stories. While Harding’s Luck is primarily a children’s novel, it touches on many deeper themes and comments seriously on the social conditions of the author’s time.
Description
Edith Nesbit was a popular children’s author of the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras in Britain. Though she was writing more than a century ago, her books nevertheless remain popular and are generally still in print.
The House of Arden was published in 1908. Like her other, perhaps better known tales, such as Five Children and It, the story takes quite ordinary children of the time and plunges them into fantastical adventures.
In this book, two children, with the interesting Saxon names of Edred and Elfrida, aged 10 and 12 respectively, discover that due to the death of a distant relative, young Edred is now Lord of Arden. The estate consists of not much more than a little money, a crumbling castle, and an attached house. An old retainer tells them of a legend regarding the Lord of Arden and a buried treasure. Naturally they are eager to locate the treasure, which may help them restore the castle. They discover a way to summon up the mascot of the House, a white mole or “mouldiwarp,” who enables them to travel back through time in search of the treasure.