#e nesbit

[justjudethoughts]

There is nothing that delights my heart more than the way children are written in classic literature. I'm listening to Anne of Ingleside right now, and the fact that she refers to all five of her kids as "the babies" even though the oldest is 7 is simply TOO wholesome. There is also a line about chubby hands and knees and oh—

And Demi and Daisy in Little Women? And the way tiny Bess in Little Men rules the house as the little princess the boys worship? Or the pure, perfect innocence of Diamond in At the Back of the North Wind?

But even when the "cute factor" isn't the focal point, I just think classic books are better at depicting children. The Bastable children in Story of the Treasure Seekers? So good. The thought processes of Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane in The Five Children and It books? They are *so accurately* the thoughts of kids. The insults Jem hurls at Anne and Gilbert when they won't let him go out with his friends, and how he gets angrier the calmer they are?

Circa 1850-1950 must have been the golden age of children's literature

[dandelionjack]

my letterboxd review of the new bbc ghost story for christmas :)

[victusinveritas]

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[richaldis]

Why Mark Gatiss is good for tv

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

There is no moral to this story, except…. But no—there is no moral.

-- E. Nesbit. "The Mixed Mine" (Short Story) from The Magic World (Anthology). 1924 Edition; first published by Macmillan & Co., Limited in 1912.

(This is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the best closing lines in all of children's literature)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Magic World, online (with illustrations)

[vintage-archive]

The Railway Children, illustrated by Pamela Kay (1990)

[rayless-reblogs]

20 Book Challenge

I saw this challenge on a post by @theresebelivett. The idea is you pick 20 of your books to take with you to a desert island, but you can only pick one book per author and series. Here are two further guidelines I set myself: They have to be books I actually own, as if I really am gathering them up under my arms and heading to the island; and I'm defining "book" as a single volume -- so if I just so happen to have 100 novellas squashed between two covers, it still counts as one book.

We'll go alphabetically by author.

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre. An old standby, a classic, I can jump into it at any point.

Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca. Have only read it once, but loved it and I suspect I'll get more from it each time.

Clare B Dunkle: The Hollow Kingdom. If I can only take one book from this excellent and unusual goblin series that captivated me in the mid-2000s, it'd better be the first one.

William Goldman: The Princess Bride. This book had an outsize influence on my own writing. I can quote a lot of it, but I wouldn't want to be without it.

Shannon Hale: Book of a Thousand Days. I love the warmth and humility of its heroine Dashti. Plus, Shannon Hale very kindly wrote a personal response to a fan letter I sent her years and years ago, so her work always has a special place in my heart.

Georgette Heyer: Cotillion. I don't actually own my favorite Georgette novel, but the funny, awkward, and ultimately romantic Cotillion is definitely not a pitiful second-stringer.

Eva Ibbotson: A Countess Below Stairs. Countess was my introduction to Eva's adult romances, and she is the past master of warm, hardworking heroines who should really be annoying because they're way too good to be true, but somehow you just end up falling in love with them.

Norton Juster: The Phantom Tollbooth. I first read this when I was like eight, and even for an adult, its quirky humor and zingy wordplay hold up, no problem.

Gaston Leroux: The Phantom of the Opera. Can't leave without Erik, nope, the French potboiler has got to come. Perhaps I will spend my time on the island writing the inevitable crossover fanfic, The Phantom of the Tollbooth.

CS Lewis: Till We Have Faces. Faces is my current answer for what my favorite book is, so I'm taking that, though it feels criminal to leave The Silver Chair behind.

LM Montgomery: The Blue Castle. As much as I love Anne and Emily, it came down to Blue Castle and A Tangled Web, and I'm a sucker for Valancy's romantic journey.

E Nesbit: Five Children and It. Probably the most classic Edwardian children's fantasy, though still a hard choice to make. Nesbit is another author who had a huge influence on me as a writer.

Robert C O'Brien: Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. A childhood book I'm really sentimental about. I should re-read it.

Meredith Ann Pierce: The Darkangel. The first in the archaic lunar vampire trilogy. This will always be frustrating, only having the first in the series, but if I can only read the first, maybe I'll forget about how angry the third novel left me.

Sherwood Smith: Crown Duel. At one time, this swords-and-manners fantasy duet was one of my absolute favorite fandoms, and clever me has both books in one volume, so I don't have to choose.

Anne Elisabeth Stengl: Starflower. My favorite of the Tales of Goldstone Wood series. We'll have to test whether I can actually get sick of Eanrin.

JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings. I've never actually read it through as an adult and, look at that, I have a three-in-one volume. Cheating!

Vivian Vande Velde: Spellbound. I've read much of VVV's YA fantasy and liked a lot of it, but none more so than The Conjurer Princess and its fast-paced tale of revenge. The Spellbound edition includes the prequel and a bonus short story, so I'm good to go.

PG Wodehouse: The World of Mr Mulliner. There are some hilarious novels I'm leaving behind here, including all the Bertie Wooster stuff. But there are some absurdly fun Mulliner stories and this edition is like three hundred pages. That'll keep me happy for a long while on my island.

Jack Zipes (editor): Spells of Enchantment. This is an enormous compilation of western fairy tales. I've owned it since 2004 or so, and I've still never finished it. Now, on my island, I'll no longer have the excuse.

Tagging anyone else who feels like doing this!

[daily-rayless]

Fan art for "The Princess and the Hedge-pig", one of many original fairy tales by the brilliant early twentieth-century fantasy author E Nesbit. So many of Nesbit's fairy tales are fun and funny and clever, but Hedge-pig (just another name for a hedgehog) has long been my favorite. Our heroine, the Princess Ozyliza, who can fight and shoot as well as any Prince Charming, is ousted from her throne. Her enemies attempt to assassinate her with a barrage of arrows. But her childhood friend, a strapping young baker's apprentice, throws himself in the line of fire, is repeatedly impaled in the back, and, to save his life, a good fairy turns him into a hedgehog. From there, they set out to win back her kingdom.

Nesbit often writes with an eye for humor, so I wanted to capture a bit of silliness in this.

[haveyoureadthismgyabook]

Series info:

Book 1 of Five Children

Book 2: The Phoenix and the Carpet

Book 3: The Story of the Amulet

[godzilla-reads]

🧊 The Ice Dragon by E. Nesbit and Carole Grey

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

In this story for children, George and Jane adventure to the North Pole when curious about the Northern Lights, but soon find a dragon and wicked seal-skin dwarves.

A fun and imaginative story about the North Pole that feels perfect for the low temperatures at the moment. I wish the dragon played a bigger part in the story, since the story IS named after him, but I thought this was still entertaining to read.

[earhartsease]

E Nesbit, who wrote The Railway Children in 1901, also wrote a collection of children's stories about dragons, the last one of which was called The Last of the Dragons, and it opens with this very British scorn of the US

Of course you know that dragons were once as common as motor-omnibuses are now, and almost as dangerous. But as every well-brought-up prince was expected to kill a dragon, and rescue a princess, the dragons grew fewer and fewer till it was often quite hard for a princess to find a dragon to be rescued from. And at last there were no more dragons in France and no more dragons in Germany, or Spain, or Italy, or Russia. There were some left in China, and are still, but they are cold and bronzy, and there were never any, of course, in America.

anyway Does The Dragon Die? no, it's okay

[waywordsstudio]

𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑾𝒂𝒚𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔: 𝑨 𝑾𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈: "𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒉𝒂𝒅𝒐𝒘" 𝒃𝒚 𝑬. 𝑵𝒆𝒔𝒃𝒊𝒕 -

Why not tell some ghost stories this Solstice? Here's one from 1907, which may be even more terrifying beneath its surface. . . .

Waypoint – The Shadow | Waywords Studio

[helmstone]

Woman of Stone — new horror for Christmas

The holiday season has to mean at least one horror on the BBC, and recent years have meant a Mark Gatiss production. This season it’s Woman of Stone, an E Nesbit story. In her final days, author Edith Nesbit recounts the chilling tale of newlywed Victorians Jack and Laura. The couple are settling into a small cottage in a quiet village when their idyll is overshadowed by the superstitious…

[kaggsy59]

"...no explanation, no logical coherence..." @katehandheld #ENesbit

The indie publisher Handheld Press has made regular appearances on the Ramblings, as I’m a real fan of their beautifully produced books. As well as reprinted fiction, they’ve also released anthologies, biographies, nature writing, fantasy/sci fi and crime titles, to name just a few. Sadly, Handheld is coming to a close later this year, which is a huge shame; but they’re certainly going out with a…