Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

BOOK: Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
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
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
 
 
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
Copyright © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
 
Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics
colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.
 
The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-274-1 ISBN-10: 1-59308-274-6
eISBN : 978-1-411-43211-6
LC Control Number 2005926182
 
Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher
 
Printed in the United States of America
QM
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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 schools, 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 Whereyouwanttogo 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.
1910
Nesbit publishes The Magic City, with a character (the Pretenderette) that seems to lampoon a prominent suffragette, Evelyn Sharp, to whom Nesbit writes a letter explaining why she refuses to join the movement.
1911
Nesbit publishes The Wonderful Garden, another children’s fantasy novel, and Dormant, often considered her finest adult novel. Hubert Bland’s vision deteriorates, leaving him almost blind and in the care of his wife. Barrie’s story about Peter Pan is published as a children’s novel titled Peter and Wendy, which will later be changed to Peter Pan. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden appears.
1912
Nesbit publishes The Magic World, a collection of stories.
1913
Nesbit publishes Wet Magic, a fantastical undersea adventure and her last children’s fantasy novel. The book marks the end of her association with illustrator H. R. Millar.
1914
In April, Hubert Bland dies. World War I begins.
1917
Nesbit marries Thomas Tucker, a retired tugboat operator affectionately known as “the Skipper.”
1920
A. A. Milne’s Mr. Pym Passes By is published, as is the first of Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle books.
1921
Nesbit and Tucker leave Well Hall and settle in Jesson St. Mary’s near Dymchurch.
1922
Nesbit publishes her last novel, The Lark, a romance based on the financial problems of her later years.
1924
Nesbit dies of cancer on May 4 in St. Mary’s.
1925
Five of Us—and Madeline is published. Rosamund Bland Sharp, Nesbit’s adopted daughter, compiles this collection of stories, using material provided by Nesbit’s second husband as well as excerpts from Nesbit’s memoirs originally published in The Girl’s Own Paper (1896-1897).
1966
Nesbit’s memoirs from The Girl’s Own Paper are published in book form under the title Long Ago When I was Young.
BOOK: Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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