Favourite Children's Authors: Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson: The Changes Trilogy (1975)

When Robert Lowell's groundbreaking collection Life Studies first came out in the UK in 1959, "the British reviews were fairly tepid." After listing the reservations of such luminaries as Al Alvarez, G. S. Fraser, Roy Fuller, Frank Kermode, and Philip Larkin, Lowell's biographer Ian Hamilton throws in as a parthian shot:

... and someone called Peter Dickinson in Punch announced that "few of the poems are in themselves memorable."

- Ian Hamilton, Robert Lowell: A Biography (1982): 269.

Nice going. They didn't call Hamilton "Mr. Nasty" for nothing. That "someone called Peter Dickinson" was, admittedly, not very well known for anything much at the time - besides being the literary editor of Punch, that is.

His first detective novels were still some years in the future, and it'd be another decade before he started publishing the children's books which would, eventually, make his name. But even so ... "Do you have to leave blood on the floor at the end of every meeting?" as an academic of my acquaintance once said to an up-and-coming careerist in the same field.

Fay Godwin: Peter Dickinson (1975)

I used to wonder why Dickinson used to claim, at the end of his "About the Author" blurbs:

His main interest, he says, "is writing verse. A lost art, in the way I do it. I feel like a man making wooden carriage wheels for the one customer who wants them."

A collection of these "verses", The Weir (2007), was eventually published by his four children as a birthday tribute a few years before his death. Here's a sample, from an advertisement for the book:

Self-published (thus not quite print-on-demand) it is attractively printed and is to be had from 1 Arlebury Park Mews, Alresford, Hants. S0 24 9ER – an address celebrated in the final Palinode:

Surely the quack must yearn just once to heal,
The falsest prophet hanker to reveal.
And should the poetaster* still refuse
To hope The Mews has welcomed in the Muse.

*untrue. Ed.

Hmmm. "More plaintive than constructive," I fear - to borrow a phrase from John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes - certainly not particularly instructive. The only other set of verses I've managed to locate online come from the "faq" section of Dickinson's own website:

Peter Dickinson

Frequently Asked Questions

Note

If you’re upon a School Assignment
You won’t be wanting this refinement.
Cheer up! There’s stuff about each book
Elsewhere, if you would care to look.


Do you put people you know into your books?

Where was she from, the woman in the tower?
I pushed a doorway on the winding stair,
Stole hesitantly in, and she was there,
An absolute presence, filling the room with power,
Her life a moment in my sleeping brain —
I know her, though we never meet again.

By contrast, those I see from day to day
I know by fits and snatches at the most,
A fluid jigsaw, many pieces lost.
What their real self is, who am I to say?
Though she’s the one with whom I share my life,
Can I be truly said to know my wife?


Have you any advice for a young writer?

Perfection? There is no such stuff.
But good enough is not enough.


What is your favourite book?

What is your favourite kind of food? say I.
If you have one — just one — you’re worth a sigh.


How did you become a writer?

It isn’t something I became —
It is the only life I know.
If you could somehow dam the flow
I’d be a writer just the same.

The condor in your local zoo,
Caged, wing-clipped, fed — what is it for?
It is a creature made to soar,
A dot on the enormous blue.


Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

A money spider hanging in mid air.
Like a retinal fleck it dangles from the lamp
In the blank bathroom, neither here nor there.
You reach to take the thread. Your fingers clamp

On nothing — nothing to feel or see — and yet
The thread is there, because the spider heaves
Beneath your hand. You take and loose it at
The sill, to live what life a spider lives.

A symbol surely, or a metaphor
At least. The groping mind grasps nothing. Still,
Some line of thought must have existed, for
This fleck now dangles here, this page its sill.

This I rather like, I must confess. It's not especially polished, but definitely good-humoured and interesting. I can see that it's not quite what editors were expecting in the age of Lowell and Plath, though. It sounds more like John Masefield, or one of the Georgians.

Peter Dickinson

In any case, whatever you think of him as a poet - or, for that matter, a judge of poetry - here's the rest of that bio-note, from the back of one of my old Puffin Books:

Peter Dickinson was born in Livingstone, Zambia, and was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He spent his early childhood in Northern Rhodesia and South Africa, though his roots are in Gloucestershire. He comes from a political family with a long radical tradition, and, in fact, 1960 was the first Parliament since the Reform Bill in which he had no relation.
While doing research at Cambridge, Peter Dickinson was offered a job at Punch, and he became literary editor - he remained there until he decided to live entirely by his writing. He started writing detective novels in his spare time, and it was while he was stuck on one of these that he started to write children's books. His first children's book, The Weathermonger, was published in 1968. It is very unusual in that he dreamed the first chapter in its entirety and wrote it down. Since then he has written several more detective stories and children's books. He is the only crime writer to have been awarded the Golden Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association in two successive years.

- "About the Author." Peter Dickinson, The Blue Hawk (1976): 237.

And here's a more up-to-date account of him, written some forty years later, from Ethan Iverson's obituary, "An Unusual Blend of Poetry and Fantasy":

Peter Dickinson was born in Africa, but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of the British satirical magazine, Punch, and since then has earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for adults and children.
Amongst many other awards, Peter Dickinson has been nine times short-listed for the prestigious British Carnegie medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice. He has won the Phoenix Award twice for The Seventh Raven and Eva. He won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Chance, Luck and Destiny. Eva and A Bone from A Dry Sea were ALA Notable Books and SLJ Best Books of the Year. The Ropemaker was awarded the Mythopoeic Award for Children's Literature and was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. Peter's books for children have also been published in many languages throughout the world. His latest collection of short stories, Earth and Air, was published in October and his latest novel, In the Palace of the Khans was published in November.
Peter Dickinson was the first author to win the British Crime-Writers Golden Dagger for two books running: Skin Deep (1968), and A Pride of Heroes (1969). He has written twenty-one crime and mystery novels, which have been published in several languages.
He has been chairman of the UK Society of Authors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded an O.B.E. for services to literature in 2009.

Website: www.peterdickinson.com

The Carnegie Medal

Dickinson was quite a one for prizes, really. They say above that he was "nine times short-listed for the prestigious British Carnegie medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice."

What's more, he won it sequentially: for Tulku (1979) and City of Gold and Other Stories from the Old Testament (1980). He was also highly commended for Eva (1988), and commended for:

1. The Devil's Children (1970)
2. The Dancing Bear (1972)
3. The Blue Hawk (1976)
4. A Bone from a Dry Sea (1992)

The other two occasions he was on the short-list do not appear to have resulted in any commendations or awards. Nor are they included in the wikipedia page on the topic.

You'll note from the listings below that I own copies of - and have read - most of his 24 children's novels (not counting picture books, short stories, or edited collections). If I had to note a single dominant characteristic among them, it would be variety of theme and subject matter.

Peter Dickinson: The Flight of Dragons (1979)

There was never any guessing where Dickinson would go next. He started off with a strong bent towards fantasy, in such books as The Gift (1973), and (of course) the Changes trilogy (1968-70). This could be said to have culminated in his mock-serious biology textbook The Flight of Dragons (1979), which inspired the 1982 animated film of the same name.

Peter Dickinson: AK (1990)

He was also very interested in politics and activism: Annerton Pit (1977), AK (1990), and Shadow of a Hero (1993) and are all examples of that.

Peter Dickinson: A Bone from a Dry Sea (1990)

Then there was his fascination with prehistory and early man: A Bone from a Dry Sea (1992) and The Kin (1998) both dealt with that.

Peter Dickinson: Tulku (1979)

What else? Tibetan Buddhism in Tulku (1979); Lewis Carroll-like inventiveness in A Box of Nothing (1985); dystopian SF in Eva (1988); even a kind of epic fantasy in The Ropemaker (2001) and its sequel Angel Isle (2006) ...

Peter Dickinson: The Ropemaker (2001)

Perhaps that was his figure in the carpet, in fact: an impatience with creative straitjacketing and the commercial imperative to repeat the same kind of success over and over again.

What is your favourite kind of food? say I.
If you have one — just one — you’re worth a sigh.

Could that have accounted for his lukewarm response to Life Studies, way back in 1959? As Elizabeth Bishop said of her friend Robert Lowell's sense of "assurance" (by which I suspect she may actually have meant entitlement):

I feel I could write in as much detail about my uncle Artie, say, - but what would be the significance? Nothing at all. He became a drunkard, fought with his wife, and spent most of his time fishing ... and was ignorant as sin. It is sad; slightly more interesting than having an uncle practising law in Schenectady maybe, but that's about all. Whereas all you have to do is put down the names. And the fact that it seems significant, illustrative, American etc. gives you, I think, the confidence you display ...

EB to RL (December 14, 1957)

Dickinson, too, came from a reasonably eminent background: "He comes from a political family with a long radical tradition, and, in fact, 1960 was the first Parliament since the Reform Bill in which he had no relation", as he comments in the first of the bio-notes quoted above. But it's not, I think, something he ever plumed himself upon.

Nevertheless, that underlying radicalism does seem to have come through in his choice of touchy and difficult subjects - unusual in the kinds of children's books I (for one) was reading at the time: eco-terrorism in Annerton Pit, child mercenaries in AK, the perils of AI in Eva. One could call that being ahead of his time, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was of his time in a way the conservative, rural English children's writing of the time simply wasn't.

Does this in itself make him worthy of our attention? Certainly - in terms of literary history. However, I suspect that this particular aspect of his books may fade away over the years, leaving behind only their solid storytelling credentials. The Changes trilogy still seems very relevant to me, more than half a century after its first appearance. I know. I reread it quite recently.

Peter Dickinson: The Weathermonger / Heartease / The Devil's Children (1968-70)

I guess what interests me particularly about these three books is the way in which we can see Dickinson evolving and discovering new aspects of himself as a writer as the series continues. The first one, The Weathermonger, is full of fantasy and magic. It draws on an almost T. H. White-like vision of the Arthurian legend to explain the death of the everyday technology we've become so used to that it's hard to imagine life without it.

In the second book, Heartsease, Dickinson begins to flex his novelist's muscles a little more. The characters are far more interesting and complex, and the moral dilemmas more human-sized and realistic. The "change" from a technical to an agrarian society is now so ingrained in this Britain that it's hard for the characters to see any alternative.

The third book, The Devil's Children, is the one where we really see the mature Dickinson arrive. The travelling community of Sikhs twelve-year-old English girl Nicola finds herself adopted by have their own traditions, but they've also been forced to make adjustments to the dominant culture around them. She, in her turn, is forced to accommodate herself to this, much against her will. You could, if you wished to, see it as a little fable about multiculturalism disguised as an adventure story, but that would be simplistic. These are real, living characters, and the world they move through is as terrifyingly vivid as any dystopic landscape before or since.

The books move in backwards chronological order. Nicola in The Devil's Children is at the beginning of a set of cultural changes which will subsequently involve Margaret in Heartsease and which will be brought to an end by Sally in The Weathermonger. Unusually for male writers at the time, adolescent girls appear to have been Dickinson's protagonists of choice at this early point in his career, but (like most generalisations about him) that would not hold steady for long.

Peter Dickinson: A Box of Nothing (1985)

Not all of his complex and varied oeuvre is as good as this first, intensely gripping trilogy, but there are few really negligible titles there. One I read for the first time last year was the bizarrely inventive A Box of Nothing.

It seems to me every bit as good as Norton Juster's Phantom Tollbooth - possibly even on a par with visionary British writers such as David Lindsay or Mervyn Peake. It's not really characteristic of the rest of his work - but then, what is? Like any true gourmet, he didn't have one favourite food but many.

Peter Dickinson: Skin Deep / The Glass-sided Ants' Nest (1968)

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Jack Manning: Peter Dickinson (1986)

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson
(1927-2015)

Children's Novels:


1. The Changes Trilogy
   • The Changes Trilogy: The Devil's Children; Heartsease; The Weathermonger. 1970, 1969 & 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
   1. The Weathermonger (1968)
      • The Weathermonger. 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
   2. Heartsease (1969)
      • Heartsease. 1969. Illustrated by Robert Hales. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
   3. The Devil's Children (1970)
      • The Devil's Children. 1970. Illustrated by Robert Hales. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
2. Emma Tupper's Diary (1970)
   • Emma Tupper's Diary. 1971. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
3. [with Lois Lamplugh] Mandog (1972)
4. The Dancing Bear (1972)
   • The Dancing Bear. Illustrated by David Smee. 1972. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
5. The Gift (1973)
   • The Gift. Illustrated by Gareth Floyd London: Victor Gollancz, 1973.
6. The Blue Hawk (1976)
   • The Blue Hawk. Illustrated by David Smee. 1976. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
7. Annerton Pit (1977)
   • Annerton Pit. 1977. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.
8. Tulku (1979)
   • Tulku. 1979. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.
9. The Seventh Raven (1981)
   • The Seventh Raven. 1981. A Puffin Plus. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
10. Healer (1983)
    • Healer. 1983. A Puffin Plus. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
11. A Box of Nothing (1985)
    • A Box of Nothing. Illustrated by Ian Newsham. 1985. A Magnet Book. London: Methuen, 1987.
12. Eva (1988)
    • Eva. 1988. London: Corgi Freeway, 1992.
13. AK (1990)
    • AK. 1990. London: Corgi Freeway, 1992.
14. A Bone from a Dry Sea (1992)
    • A Bone from a Dry Sea. 1992. London: Corgi Freeway, 1994.
15. Shadow of a Hero (1993)
    • Shadow of a Hero. 1994. London: Corgi Freeway, 1996.
16. Time and the Clock Mice, Etcetera (1993)
17. The Kin (1998)
    1. Suth's Story
    2. Noli's Story
    3. Ko's Story
    4. Mana's Story
    • The Kin. Illustrated by Ian Andrew. 1998. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001.
18. The Ropemaker (2001)
    • The Ropemaker. Illustrated by Ian Andrew. 2001. Macmillan Children’s Books. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2002.
19. The Tears of the Salamander (2003)
20. The Gift Boat [aka 'Inside Granddad'] (2004)
21. Angel Isle [The Ropemaker, 2] (2006)
    • Angel Isle. Illustrated by Ian Andrew. 2006. Macmillan Children’s Books. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2007.
22. In the Palace of the Khans (2012)

Mystery Novels:

James Pibble series:

Skin Deep [aka 'The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest'] (1968)

A Pride of Heroes [aka 'The Old English Peep-Show'] (1969)

The Seals [aka 'The Sinful Stones'] (1970)

Sleep and His Brother (1971)

The Lizard in the Cup (1972)

One Foot in the Grave (1979)

23. The Green Gene (1973)
24. The Poison Oracle (1974)
25. The Lively Dead (1975)
26. King and Joker (1976)
27. Walking Dead (1977)
28. A Summer in the Twenties (1981)
29. The Last Houseparty (1982)
30. Hindsight (1983)
31. Death of a Unicorn (1984)
32. Tefuga (1985)
33. Skeleton-in-Waiting (1987)
34. Perfect Gallows (1988)
35. Play Dead (1991)
36. The Yellow Room Conspiracy (1992)
37. Some Deaths Before Dying (1999)

Picture Books:


38. The Iron Lion. Illustrated by Marc Brown & Pauline Baynes (1973)
39. Hepzibah. Illustrated by Sue Porter (1978)
40. Giant Cold. Illustrated by Alan Cober (1984)
41. Mole Hole (1987)
42. Chuck and Danielle (1996)

Short Stories:


43. City of Gold and Other Stories from the Old Testament. Illustrated by Michael Foreman (1980)
44. Merlin Dreams (1988)
45. The Lion Tamer's Daughter and Other Stories [aka 'Touch and Go'] (1997)
46. [with Robin McKinley]. Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits (2002)
    • [with Robin McKinley]. Elementals: Water. 2002. London: Corgi Books, 2003.
47. [with Robin McKinley]. Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits (2009)
48. Earth and Air: Tales of Elemental Creatures (2012)

Non-fiction:


49. Chance, Luck and Destiny (1975)
50. The Flight of Dragons. Illustrated by Wayne Anderson (1979)

Poetry:


51. The Weir: Poems by Peter Dickinson (2007)
52. A Closer Look At Me: A Collection of Poems Which Cover Everything from Love & Life to Serial Killers (2019)

Edited:


53. Hundreds and Hundreds (1983)
    • Hundreds and Hundreds. 1983. A Puffin Original. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.

Peter Dickinson, ed.: Hundreds and Hundreds (1984)

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Favourite Children's Authors: A. A. Milne

Simon Curtis, dir. Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

A. A. Milne was a haunted man.

To all appearances he was the acme of success. After achieving the coveted goal of a regular column in Punch at a surprisingly young age, he realised one day that all that lay ahead of him now was the Sisyphean task of having to come up with something mildly amusing (but not too racy) every week until the end of time.

Ann Thwaite: A. A. Milne: His Life (1990)

As Ann Thwaite's excellent biography tells us, the outbreak of the First World War came almost as a relief to him: a chance to escape from this depressing drudgery.

Unfortunately things didn't quite work out like that. Milne was invalided home after a couple of months at the front with the common diagnosis of trench fever, or PUO [Pyrexia Unknown Origin] - in other words, feeling sick for no discernible reason.

The same thing happened to C. S. Lewis - and to J. R. R. Tolkien. Trench fever in both cases. Hence, I suppose, the fact that we have the "Narnia" books and The Lord of the Rings rather than another couple of names on the grandiose Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.

Milne, like his younger contemporaries Lewis and Tolkien, never went back, instead managing to wangle himself a safe billet as a signals instructor. But, unlike the other two, he was abnormally sensitive for the rest of his life to any references to his perfectly respectable - albeit a little less than resplendent - war record.

The Play Pictorial: Journey's End (1929)

When Milne watched the first performance of R. C. Sherriff's classic war play Journey's End in 1928, for instance, it was difficult to persuade him that Captain Stanhope's reference to Hibbert as "another little worm trying to wriggle home" was not a direct dig at him:

How long's he been out here? Three months, I suppose. Now he's decided he's done his bit. He's decided to go home and spend the rest of the war in comfortable nerve hospitals - He thinks he's going to wriggle home before the attack ... [quoted in Thwaite, 180]

In any case, freed from the inferno of Punch as well as the Western Front, he started a new career as a West End dramatist, and produced a series of pretty successful plays - as well as screenplays for the burgeoning British film industry - throughout the 1920s and 30s.

•

Howard Coster: A. A. Milne, Christopher Robin & Pooh Bear (1928)

But then came Christopher Robin.

The birth of his young son in 1920 inspired him to start writing a series of part-comic, part-sentimental poems, which seemed to hit a nerve with the reading public. Was it just that they were eager for whimsy after the horrors of the war? That was probably as much his motive for writing them as theirs for reading them - reading all that he could churn out and still demanding more.

A. A. Milne: The Christopher Robin Books (1924-28)

The rest is history. I certainly couldn't escape endless readings of these poems and stories in my childhood, and neither - I suspect - could most of you. I can still recite a fair number of them from memory. And characters such as Eeyore, Tigger, and Piglet are ingrained in my soul.

•

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Even at the time there were a few dissenters - such as the queen of sarcastic put-downs, Dorothy Parker. Here's an extract from her "Constant Reader" column in the New Yorker for October 12, 1928:

“The more it
SNOWS-tiddely-pom,
The more it
GOES-tiddely-pom
The more it
GOES-tiddely-pom
On
Snowing.

“And nobody
KNOWS-tiddely-pom,
How cold my
TOES-tiddely-pom
How cold my
TOES-tiddely-pom
Are
Growing.”

The above lyric is culled from the fifth page of Mr. A. A. Milne’s new book, The House at Pooh Corner, for, although the work is in prose, there are frequent droppings into more cadenced whimsy. This one is designated as a “Hum,” that pops into the head of Winnie-the-Pooh as he is standing outside Piglet’s house in the snow, jumping up and down to keep warm. It “seemed to him a Good Hum, such as is Hummed Hopefully to Others.” In fact, so Good a Hum did it seem that he and Piglet started right out through the snow to Hum It Hopefully to Eeyore. Oh darn — there I’ve gone and given away the plot. I could bite my tongue out.
As they are trotting along against the flakes, Piglet begins to weaken a bit.
“‘Pooh,’ he said at last and a little timidly, because he didn’t want Pooh to think he was Giving In, ‘I was just wondering. How would it be if we went home now and practised your song, and then sang it to Eeyore tomorrow — or — or the next day, when we happen to see him.’
“‘That’s a very good idea, Piglet,’ said Pooh. ‘We’ll practise it now as we go along. But it’s no good going home to practise it, because it’s a special Outdoor Song which Has To Be Sung In The Snow.’
“‘Are you sure?’ asked Piglet anxiously.
“‘Well, you’ll see, Piglet, when you listen. Because this is how it begins. The more it snows, tiddely-pom —’
“‘Tiddely what?’ said Piglet.” (He took, as you might say, the very words out of your correspondent’s mouth.)
“‘Pom,’ said Pooh. ‘I put that in to make it more hummy.’”
And it is that word “hummy,” my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.

Leon Neal: The House at Pooh Corner (1928)

Har-de-ha-ha. It must have got a bit wearing for Milne at times, though, listening to all the other chaps laughing at him behind his back and mocking the sheer obscene extent of his success with all this baby-talk.

The atmosphere of the times, and the grotesque lengths which the Milnes, husband and wife, were prepared to go to in pimping out their little boy to the public are portrayed in grim detail in both Ann Thwaite's coffee-table book The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh (1992) and Simon Curtis's more recent movie Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017).

There are some particularly memorable scenes in the latter of Christopher himself being brutally bullied at school by gleeful oafs who kick him down the stairs as they intone: "Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! / Christopher Robin is saying his prayers," and other artless verses.

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A. A. Milne: Peace with Honour (1934)

Milne was a vociferous pacifist throughout the 1930s: eagerly backing Chamberlain and the other architects of appeasement, and trying to convince everyone he met of the necessity of disarmament. Mind you, the same was true of many other prominent authors at the time, and - in the abstract - who can dispute the desirability of an end to war?

It appears to have frustrated him somewhat that his friend and fellow humorist P. G. Wodehouse refused to go along with him in this. Wodehouse was famously apolitical, and took up no positions whatever on current affairs, except for indulging in a persistent vein of mockery of dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler in the pages of his Jeeves novels.

In particular, there's a recurring gag about an aspiring British fascist leader called Roderick Spode (presumably based on Oswald Mosley) who leads a group of violent thugs called the "Black Shorts":

"By the way, when you say ‘shorts’ you mean ‘shirts’ of course."
"No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts."
"Footer bags, you mean?"
"Yes."
"How perfectly foul."
"Yes."
"Bare knees?"
"Bare knees."
"Golly!"
"Yes."

- P. G. Wodehouse: The Mating Season (1938)

A. A. Milne: War with Honour (1940)

When war finally came in September 1939, Milne had to shift gears pretty quickly to re-establish his bona fides with the Great British Reading Public. Four months later, on January 1st, he issued a revised dispatch on his ideological position entitled War with Honour. The essential thing he needed to point out was that he still stood by his earlier pacifist views concerning everyone except Hitler. As one reviewer explained:

... the quickest way back to peace is to defeat Hitler, because the option of "peace" with Hitler in charge would be worse than war.

Is it wrong of me to be reminded by Milne's swift volte-face of the political commentator in Monty Python's "Election Night Special" who points out that the election had gone "largely as I predicted, except that the Silly Party won"?

I think one should point out that in this constituency since the last election a lot of very silly people have moved into new housing estates with the result that a lot of sensible voters have moved further down the road the other side of number, er, 29.

It's not that one can't see Milne's point. The advent of Hitler was a game-changer. There's certainly no shame in revising your opinions from time to time according to circumstances - just as there was no real reason to feel sensitive about having been invalided home from the Somme. But the trouble was that he always had to be right. If he ever seemed to be wrong, it must be because someone else had misunderstood him: there could be no other possible explanation.

So, from being one of the nation's foremost pacifists, Milne went to be one of its most fire-breathing patriots. Hence his behaviour during the notorious Wodehouse affair.

I've already written a little about this in another post about P. G. Wodehouse and his biographers. After being captured by the Germans at his home in France in 1940, Wodehouse and his wife were sent to an interment camp in Lille, and thence to further (separate) camps in Belgium and Germany.

It was German policy to release civilian detainees on their sixtieth birthday. For Wodehouse, the date would have come around in October 1941. A few months before that, however, he was transferred to Berlin and asked if he'd like to stay in touch with his "American readers" by broadcasting to them on German radio. Foolishly, he agreed.

New York Times: "Wodehouse is Freed from Internment Camp ..." (July 2, 1941)

It should be emphasised that numerous other prison camp inmates detained by the Germans had already done the same thing. None of them ever received the opprobrium Wodehouse did - or were even criticised for it. Nor was America at war with Germany at the time.

The complete innocence of what he broadcast - humorous details of camp life - did not affect the fact that he was immediately decried as a traitor in both the UK and America. Ever since there's been a powerful lobby who continue to lump him in with antisemites and collaborators such as Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Lord Haw-Haw, or Ezra Pound.

In her excellent article on the subject, "Bertie Wooster v. Christopher Robin" (2021), Josie Holford points out that Wodehouse's broadcasts were denounced in Parliament before anyone - including Duff Cooper, the Minister for Information - had even had a chance to hear them.

National Portrait Gallery: Sir William Neil Connor ('Cassandra') (1909-1967)

Duff Cooper's speech, ghost-written by demagogue William Connor, better known for his "Cassandra" column in the Daily Mirror, included statements such as "It is a sombre story of honour pawned to the Nazis for the price of a warm bed," and "Wodehouse was throwing a cocktail party when the storm-troopers clumped in on his shallow life." It concluded as follows:

And Dr. Goebbels taking him into a high mountain, showed unto him all the Kingdoms of the world, and said unto him: "All this power I will give thee if thou wilt worship the Führer."
Pelham Wodehouse fell on his knees.

Among the very first to jump on the bandwagon of denunciation was A. A. Milne, who unleashed "a vicious and highly personal tirade" against his former friend in the Daily Telegraph on July 3rd 1941:

The news that P. G. Wodehouse had been released from his concentration camp delighted his friends; the news that he had settled down comfortably at the Adlon [Hotel in Berlin] made them anxious; the news that he was to give weekly broadcasts (but not about politics, because he had 'never taken any interest in politics') left them in no doubt as to what had happened to him. He had escaped again.
I remember that he told me once he wished he had a son and he he added characteristically (and quite sincerely) 'but he would have to be born at the age of 15, whe he was just getting into his house eleven." You see that advantage of that. Bringing up a son throws considerable responsibility on a man, but by the time the boy is 15 one has shifted the responsibility onto the housemaster, without forfeiting any reflected glory that may be about.
This, I felt, had always been Wodehouse's attitude to life. He has encouraged in himself a natural lack of interest in 'politics' - 'politics' being all the things grown-ups talk about at dinner when one is hiding under the table. Things, for instance, like the last war, which found and kept him in America; and postwar taxes, which chased him backwards and forwards across the Atlantic until he finally found sanctuary in France.
An ill-chosen sanctuary it must have seemed last June, when politics came surging across the Somme.
Irresponsibility in what the papers call 'a licensed humorist' can be carried too far; naïveté can be carried too far. Wodehouse has been given a good deal of licence in the past, but I fancy that now his licence will be withdrawn.
Before this happens I beg him to surrender it of his own free will; to realise that though a genius may grant himself an enviable position above the battle where civic and social responsibilities are concerned, there are times when a man has to come down into the arena, pledge himself to the cause in which he believes, and suffer for it.

As Josie Holford points out:

The anecdote about parenting that Milne alleges Wodehouse said to him in person is actually a quote from a novel Wodehouse wrote in 1908 ... It’s a family supper scene in Clapham, and Mike Jackson is seated next to the householder’s insufferable son:

Mike got on with small girls reasonably well. He preferred them at a distance, but, if cornered by them, could put up a fairly good show. Small boys, however, filled him with a sort of frozen horror. It was his view that a boy should not be exhibited publicly until he reached an age when he might be in the running for some sort of colours at a public school.

- Psmith in the City, Chapter 17

P. G. Wodehouse: Psmith in the City (1910)

Actually, that's just the first of many inaccuracies and half-truths in Milne's article. Once you start to look at it in detail, the fact-checking needed begins to look like those long screeds appended to each new speech by Donald Trump.

First, all that elaborate mockery of Wodehouse's "lack of interest in 'politics'":

'politics' being all the things grown-ups talk about at dinner when one is hiding under the table.

This is surely a bit rich coming from one of the principal proponents of both pacifism and appeasement? One can't help feeling that some of those weighty dinner-time discussions of 'politics" with the likes of Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain might have been spent more profitably playing bridge instead.

Then there's that little sneer about "the last war, which found and kept him in America." Yes. And? Is that any less "honourable" than being invalided home to pursue one's career as a playwright in London? People who live in glass houses ...

Weirdest of all, though, is that statement of Milne's about how "Bringing up a son throws considerable responsibility on a man." This doesn't quite square with Christopher Robin's own statement: "It seemed to me almost that my father had got to where he was by climbing upon my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and had left me with the empty fame of being his son." Ouch!

As it happens, Wodehouse was (by all accounts) an excellent father. He adopted Leonora, his wife Ethel's daughter from a previous marriage, and it seems from their letters that:

Wodehouse adored being a stepfather ... Family, for Wodehouse, was forged through love, not genetics. Leonora – or "Snorky" – as she soon became, was far more precious to Wodehouse than any of his biological relations.

She eventually became his "confidential secretary and adviser", and her death from a botched operation in 1944 was a tragedy neither of the Wodehouses ever recovered from. It far outweighed, for them, all the fallout from the witchhunt surrounding them at the end of the war.

Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972)

Whisky Galore author Compton Mackenzie hit the nail on the nail when he wrote, in response to Milne's article:

There is a curious infelicity in Mr A. A. Milne’s sneer at Mr P. G. Wodehouse for shirking the responsibility of fatherhood. Such a rebuke would have been more decorously from a father who has abstained from the profitable exhibitionism in which the creator of Christopher Robin has indulged. I gather that Mr. Wodehouse is in disgrace for telling the American public over the radio about his comfortable existence at the Hotel Adlon. Not being convinced that I am morally entitled to throw stones at a fellow author, and retaining as I do an old-fashioned prejudice against condemning a man unheard, I do not propose to inflict my opinion upon the public, beyond affirming that at the moment I feel more disgusted by Mr. Milne’s morality than by Mr. Wodehouse’s irresponsibility.

Needless to say, the Daily Telegraph saw no need to print his letter.

At risk of belabouring the point, the notion that Wodehouse had somehow been irresponsible in remaining at his house in France is also misguided. Le Touquet is a seaside resort down the coast from Calais. Calling it an "ill-chosen sanctuary" obscures the fact that none of the military pundits in 1940 (with the possible exception of the Führer himself) foresaw the incredibly rapid collapse of the French army in the face of the German blitzkrieg.

Nor was there any way to predict that the fall of France would leave so little time for foreign nationals to evacuate.

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Iain Sproat: Wodehouse at War (1981)

It's hard, in retrospect, for us to comprehend fully the hysterical atmosphere of wartime Britain. This was, after all, before America's (enforced) entry into the conflict, and something of a siege mentality was probably inevitable.

Milne never apologised for his misleading, venomous words - but then, neither did the British government. Although they investigated Wodehouse thoroughly in 1945, and concluded that any attempt at prosecution would be futile, they never informed him of the fact directly, instead continuing to imply that he risked arrest for treason if he ever set foot on British soil again.

Even when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975, the ceremony had to be performed in absentia.

Milne's is a sad story, really. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow when Wodehouse's post-war popularity went from strength to strength, whereas nothing he himself did or wrote afterwards could alter his status as the whimsical creator of Winnie-the-Pooh. There are still some fans of his early detective stories to be found here and there, but everything else has sunk into oblivion.

Pete Riesett & Steven Crossot: The real Winnie-the-Pooh and friends (2016)

His son never really forgave him, but he did agree to visit him a couple of times before his death. Christopher Milne became an author in his own right, as you can see from the bibliography at the foot of this post. He refused to accept any of the royalties from the children's books about him, and allowed the toys that inspired them to be donated to the New York Public Library.

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The Far-Out Worlds of A. E. Van Vogt (1968)

A. A. Milne seems, in fact, to have been a pretty clear case of Canadian SF writer A. E. Van Vogt's "Right Man": the man who must always be right, and cannot acknowledge error under any circumstances:

It is obvious that the Right Man syndrome is a compensatory mechanism for profound self-doubt, and that its essence lies in convincing others of something he feels to be untrue

Milne was not a violent man - except on paper - but he was certainly unable to accept responsibility for mistakes. And he did have a strange compulsion to denounce in others the failings he must have known were so evident in his own life: estrangement from his son, questionable war service, bewildering reversals of opinion - in short, all the irresponsibility associated with "what the papers call 'a licensed humorist'".

Wodehouse was both more honest and more direct in his own verdict:

We were supposed to be quite good friends, but, you know, in a sort of way I think he was a pretty jealous chap. I think he was probably jealous of all other writers. But I loved his stuff.

Ann Thwaite: The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh (1992)

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A. A. Milne (1922)

Alan Alexander Milne
(1882-1956)

Novels:


1. Lovers in London (1905)
2. Once on a Time (1917)
   • Once On a Time. 1917. Illustrations by Susan Perl. London: Edmund Ward (Publishers) Limited, 1962.
3. Mr. Pim [novelisation of his 1919 play "Mr. Pim Passes By"] (1921)
4. The Red House Mystery (1922)
5. Two People (1931)
6. Four Days' Wonder (1933)
7. Chloe Marr (1946)

Non-fiction:


8. Peace With Honour (1934)
9. It's Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer (1939)
10. War With Honour (1940)
11. War Aims Unlimited (1941)
12. Year In, Year Out. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard (1952)

Collections of Articles:


13. The Day's Play (1910)
    • Included in: Those Were the Days. 1910, 1912, 1914, 1921. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929.
14. The Holiday Round (1912)
    • Included in: Those Were the Days. 1910, 1912, 1914, 1921. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929.
15. Once a Week (1914)
    • Included in: Those Were the Days. 1910, 1912, 1914, 1921. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929.
16. Not That It Matters (1919)
17. If I May (1920)
18. The Sunny Side (1921)
    • Included in: Those Were the Days. 1910, 1912, 1914, 1921. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929.
19. By Way of Introduction (1929)
20. Those Were the Days (1929)
    • Those Were the Days: Being "The Day's Play," "The Holiday Round," "Once a Week," and "The Sunny Side" in One Volume. 1910, 1912, 1914, 1921. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929.

Collections of Stories:


21. A Gallery of Children (1925)
    • A Gallery of Children. 1925. Illustrated by Henriette Willebeek Le Mair. Frederick Warne. London: The Penguin Group, 2000.
22. Winnie-the-Pooh. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard (1926)
    • Included in: The World of Pooh: Containing Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1926, 1928, 1958. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1956.
    • Included in: Winnie the Pooh: The Complete Collection of Stories and Poems. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1994.
23. The House at Pooh Corner. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard (1928)
    • Included in: The World of Pooh: Containing Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1926, 1928, 1958. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1956.
    • Included in: Winnie the Pooh: The Complete Collection of Stories and Poems. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1994.
24. The Secret and other Stories (1929)
25. The Birthday Party (1948)
26. A Table Near the Band (1950)
27. The Complete Short Stories (2023)

Poetry:


28. When We Were Very Young. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard (1924)
    • Included in: The World of Christopher Robin: Containing When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1924, 1927, 1959. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1972.
    • Included in: Winnie the Pooh: The Complete Collection of Stories and Poems. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1994.
29. For the Luncheon Interval (1925)
30. Now We Are Six. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard (1927)
    • Included in: The World of Christopher Robin: Containing When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1924, 1927, 1959. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1972.
    • Included in: Winnie the Pooh: The Complete Collection of Stories and Poems. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928. London: Methuen Children’s Books, 1994.
31. Behind the Lines (1940)
32. The Norman Church (1948)

Plays & screenplays:


33. Wurzel-Flummery (1917)
34. Belinda (1918)
35. The Boy Comes Home (1918)
36. Make-Believe (1918)
37. The Camberley Triangle (1919)
38. Mr. Pim Passes By (1919)
39. The Red Feathers (1920)
40. The Romantic Age (1920)
41. The Stepmother (1920)
42. The Truth About Blayds (1920)
43. The Bump (Minerva Films, 1920)
44. Twice Two (Minerva Films, 1920)
45. Five Pound Reward (Minerva Films, 1920)
46. Bookworms (Minerva Films, 1920)
47. The Great Broxopp (1921)
48. The Dover Road (1921)
49. The Lucky One (1922)
50. The Artist: A Duologue (1923)
51. Success [aka "Give Me Yesterday"] (1923)
52. Ariadne (1924)
53. The Man in the Bowler Hat: A Terribly Exciting Affair (1924)
54. To Have the Honour (1924)
55. Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers (1926)
56. Miss Marlow at Play (1927)
57. Winnie the Pooh (1928)
58. The Fourth Wall, or The Perfect Alibi [adapted for the film Birds of Prey (1930)] (1928)
59. The Ivory Door (1929)
60. Toad of Toad Hall [adaptation of The Wind in the Willows] (1929)
61. Michael and Mary (1930)
62. Other People's Lives (aka "They Don't Mean Any Harm") (1933)
63. Miss Elizabeth Bennet (1936)
64. Sarah Simple (1937)
65. Gentleman Unknown (1938)
66. The General Takes Off His Helmet [from The Queen's Book of the Red Cross] (1939)
67. The Ugly Duckling (1941)
68. Before the Flood (1951)

Secondary:


69. Shepard, Ernest H. Drawn from Memory. 1957. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
70. Crews, Frederick C. The Pooh Perplex: A Freshman Casebook. 1963. A Dutton Paperback. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1965.
71. Thwaite, Ann. A. A. Milne: His Life. 1990. London: Faber, 1991.
72. Thwaite, Ann. The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh: The Story of A. A. Milne and His Writing for Children. Methuen London. London: Reed Consumer Books Limited, 1992.
73. Thwaite, Ann. Goodbye Christopher Robin: A. A. Milne and the Making of Winnie-the-Pooh. Preface by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Pan Books. London: Pan Macmillan, 2017.

Frederick R. Crews: The Pooh Perplex (1963)

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Christopher Milne

Christopher Robin Milne
(1920-1996)

1. The Enchanted Places (1974)
   • The Enchanted Places. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
   • The Enchanted Places. 1974. London: Methuen, 1983.
2. The Path Through the Trees (1979)
   • The Path Through the Trees. 1979. London: Methuen, 1983.
3. The Hollow on the Hill (1982)
   • The Hollow on the Hill: The Search for a Personal Philosophy. Photographs by James Ravilious. 1982. London: Methuen, 1983.
4. The Windfall (1985)
   • The Windfall: A Fable. Engravings by Kenneth Lindley. London: Methuen, 1985.
5. The Open Garden: A Story with Four Essays (1988)
   1. The Open Garden
   2. The Egg, the Fox and the Dagger
   3. Efficiency and the Oil Beetle
   4. Beetles to Betelgeuse
   5. The Windfall

Christopher Milne: The Enchanted Places (1974)

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Favourite Children's Authors: E. Nesbit

E. Nesbit: Five Children and It (1902)

I couldn't quite bring myself to head this post with any of the images associated with the two dreadful films lately imposed upon E. Nesbit's classic novel:

John Stephenson, dir.: Five Children and It (2004)

Both are completely without charm, magic, or mystery - the things the original novel abounds in. Eddie Izzard's star-turn as grumpy sand fairy the Psammead in John Stephenson's 2004 effort certainly stresses the creature's obnoxious personality. It lacks any other discernible appeal.

Andy De Emmony, dir.: Four Kids and It (2020)

Bad though Stephenson's film is, though, I would nevertheless have to award the prize for worst Nesbit-adjacent feature film to Andy De Emmony's Four Kids and It. Russell Brand is the token comedic presence in this one, and his prancing antics make Eddie Izzard look like Laurence Olivier.

It is, admittedly, based on a more recent novel "inspired by" E. Nesbit's original - which means that a particularly mawkish and inappropriate love story has been shovelled into the story, complete with couple-surprised-in-the-middle-of-a-shag antics which would make a crow blush.

E. Nesbit: The Adventures of the Five Children (2009)

Does that sound a bit harsh? Both films were, after all, presumably intended for an audience somewhat younger than myself, and it's my own silly fault if I chose to watch them to the end.

I suppose, in my defence, it was because the "Five Children" books - Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet - were one of my earliest reading experiences, and the simple elegance of H. R. Millar's illustrations added greatly to their appeal for me at the time.

H. R. Millar: The Children discover the Psammead (1902)

They look a bit old-fashioned now. But then, so are the books. They constitute a little time-capsule of Edwardian attitudes for readers today, but their storytelling backbone remains strong.

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E. Nesbit: The Enchanted Castle (2007)

À propos of Millar's illustrations, a few years after first reading The Enchanted Castle, one of my particular favourites among Nesbit's books, in my parents' old hardback edition, I bought myself a handsome-looking copy from a second-hand shop.

E. Nesbit: The Enchanted Castle (1964)

I was dismayed to discover that it had a new set of illustrations, which almost entirely negated (for me, at least) the powerful atmosphere created by this most magical - and sinister - of her novels.

H. R. Millar: The audience of Ugly-Wugglies

In the crucial scene where the set of hastily assembled dummies created by the children as an audience for their new play comes to life, for instance, the full horror of the situation turned out to have been greatly assisted for me by Millar's illustrations.

H. R. Millar: The Ugly-Wugglies come to life

But the hall was crowded with live things, strange things — all horribly short as broomsticks and umbrellas are short. A limp hand gesticulated. A pointed white face with red cheeks looked up at him, and wide red lips said something, he could not tell what. The voice reminded him of the old beggar down by the bridge who had no roof to his mouth. These creatures had no roofs to their mouths, of course — they had no ——

"Aa oo ré o me me oo a oo ho el?" said the voice again. And it had said it four times before Gerald could collect himself sufficiently to understand that this horror — alive, and most likely quite uncontrollable — was saying, with a dreadful calm, polite persistence: —

"Can you recommend me to a good hotel?"

The macabre nature of this encounter makes much better sense to me now than I know a bit more about Edith Bland (née Nesbit)'s earlier life, and - in particular - the large number of books she'd already written before achieving a hit with the Bastable series around the turn of the century.

E. Nesbit: The Bastable Family (1899-1904)

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Nesbit had tried pretty much every other type of writing before turning to children's fiction. She started off with a set of problem novels written under the pseudonym of "Fabian Bland", before turning successively to detective stories, ghost stories, journalism, and even poetry.

S. T. Joshi, ed.: From the Dead: The Complete Weird Stories of E. Nesbit (2018)

Now her horror stories are a hit. You'll note in the bibliography below at least five recent selections from her corpus of such tales. At the time, though, they didn't succeed in distinguishing her from all the other late Victorian / early Edwardian writers obsessed with the occult.

It does help one understand, though, why her children's stories are so dominated by weird talismans, magical creatures, and mysterious concealed spaces. Even C. S. Lewis admitted that it was The Story of the Amulet (1906) which first awoke him to what he referred to - quoting Shakespeare - as "the dark backward and abysm of time."

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The Fabian Society

Another essential thing to remember is her dedication to social reform and left-wing politics. Nesbit and her husband Hubert Bland were among the founding members of the Fabian Society in 1884, and jointly edited its journal Today.

Initially they both used the pseudonym "Fabian Bland", but it soon became apparent that his serial adulteries and lack of business sense meant that - for the foreseeable future - she would have to remain the family breadwinner, and pay all the bills with her own writing. She therefore shifted to calling herself "E. Nesbit".

Despite her life-long radicalism, she was not a strong proponent of women's rights:

She opposed the cause of women’s suffrage — mainly, she claimed, because women could swing Tory, thus harming the Socialist cause.

That might be another reason she chose to follow in the tradition of Currer, Ellis, & Acton Bell - and, for that matter, George Eliot - by constructing a neutral name to help sell her work to gender-biassed editors.

I used to wonder if she'd chosen "E. Nesbit" rather than "Edith Nesbit" as her nom-de-plume to distinguish herself from Evelyn Nesbit, the turn-of-the-century American fashion model who (allegedly) provoked the murder of architect Stanford White by her husband, Harry Thaw. The resulting 1906 "Trial of the Century" made the former's gilded age morals and lifestyle notorious.

Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr.: Evelyn Nesbit (1903)

The dates, however, don't really fit. Strangely enough, Evelyn Nesbit does have her own unusual connection with children's fiction. The picture above helped Canadian author L. M. Montgomery conceive the character of Anne Shirley, the heroine of her 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables. It reminded her - apparently - of "youthful idealism and spirituality."

Edith Nesbit (1892)

Edith Nesbit herself was a very different kettle of fish. She was a professional writer, used to turning her hand to any kind of work which was likely to sell. But there was more to it than that. Something clicked into place when she turned to children's fiction.

She was no fin-de-siècle Geoffrey Trease. She didn't proselytise directly in her writing, but it was hard for her to avoid displaying a social conscience in at least some of her stories. The Railway Children, obviously, but also in lesser-known books such as Harding's Luck.

E. Nesbit: Harding's Luck (1909)

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Julia Smith, dir.: The Railway Children. Adapted by Denis Constanduros (1968)

The Railway Children is probably her most celebrated, and undoubtedly her most frequently dramatised book. My own memory goes back to the TV series above, which I found rather grim and terrifying at the time. Just reading the episode summaries recalls some of the anguish it caused me:

When their father is taken away on Christmas Day by two gentlemen from the Foreign Office and fails to return in the next few weeks, his wife announces that she and the children ... will be moving to Yorkshire "to play at being poor for a while."

It was all so realistic - not at all like the other children's TV we watched. I can still replay in my mind the horror of the scene where one of the children is caught stealing coal by the previously well-disposed Station Master.

It's been adapted for the screen a number of times since then - feature films in 1970 and 2000, as well as a sequel, The Railway Children Return (2022) set, this time, in 1944.

Jenny Agutter (1970 / 2022)

The common thread in all these versions is veteran actor Jenny Agutter, who's shifted from being one of the children, to being their mother, and (finally) their wartime caregiver. She must be getting pretty sick of the whole business by now! (I must confess to having had a considerable crush on her back in the 1970s after seeing her in such films as Nic Roeg's Walkabout and - especially - the Sci-fi classic Logan's Run).

The Railway Children is not really representative of the general run of Nesbit's children's books, though it does include some of her favourite themes. Being hard-up and desperately needing to find money somewhere is a common predicament in her books (the Bastable series, for instance). The fairly realistic way in which sibling solidarity - and rivalry - is portrayed is a strong point in most of her ensemble casts. And, finally, there's the deus ex machina of a rich uncle or deceased relative providing vitally needed funds, or lodgings, at the last minute.

Are they really of interest to modern children? Who can say? The ones who've been reading Dickens and Jane Austen from an early age might find them a bit too predictable, but the comedy of manners embedded in such fantasies as The Phoenix and the Carpet is surely evergreen.

I'm glad I read them at an age when the hints they gave of abandoned temples in the Middle East, or Ancient Egyptian amulets, were all that was needed to spark my imagination. It's true that Nesbit invented a good deal of the magical lore she included. The word "Psammead", for instance:

appears to be a coinage by Nesbit from the Greek ψάμμος "sand" after the pattern of dryad, naiad and oread, implicitly signifying "sand-nymph".

I can't help suspecting that the same is true of the House of Arden's "Mouldiwarp" (an archaic term for mole).

Yes, they're fantasy, they're escapism, but that's not all they are. She didn't set out to preach directly in her books, but they do remind you to be kind to strangers - as well as your brothers and sisters; to be respectful to your elders and betters (within reason, at any rate); and never to neglect the chance to learn something new, or to take part in an unexpected adventure.

They may seem snobby to a modern reader, but it's as well to remember that Nesbit herself was never blind to the presence of the servant with the scrubbing brush at the back of the scene, as in the H. R. Millar illustration below:

E. Nesbit: The House of Arden (1908)

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Noel Streatfeild: Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and Her Children's Books (1958)

Nesbit's biographical fortunes have been a bit up and down in the century since her death. Doris Langley Moore's pioneering account E. Nesbit (1933 / revised 1966) was followed 25 years later by a considerably blander study of her simply as a children's author by "Ballet Shoes" writer Noel Streatfeild. The blurb for her book claims:

Here is a delightful tribute to a great writer. It will be enjoyed by anyone acquainted with the E. Nesbit stories, as well as by Noel Streatfeild's many admirers.

She followed it up with a reprint of some early reminiscences by Nesbit:

E. Nesbit: Long Ago When I Was Young (1966)

Together these two books had the - possibly unintentional - effect of muting her reputation as a radical thinker for a number of years. It wasn't until Julia Briggs' A Woman of Passion came out in the mid-1980s that the full complexity of her family life, not to mention her extensive involvement in politics, were revealed.

Julia Briggs: A Woman of Passion (1987)

It's been claimed, possibly correctly, that "as a biography ... it relies heavily on the earlier incarnation written by Doris Langley Moore, whose biography of Nesbit ... used interviews with surviving family members, letters, newspapers and the other usual stories to write Edith's story." Briggs, however, "delves a little further."

I for one found it fascinating when I first read it. Nothing in Streatfeild's bland chronicle had prepared me for the fascination of the story recounted here.

Eleanor Fitzsimons: The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit (2019)

Since then two more biographies have appeared: Elisabeth Galvin's The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit: Author of Five Children and It and The Railway Children (2018), and Eleanor Fitzsimons' The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit: Victorian Iconoclast, Children's Author, and Creator of the Railway Children (2019).

Which one is better? Well, it depends on what you're looking for, I suppose. Fitzsimons' book is twice as long, far more detailed, and was chosen as A Sunday Times Best Book of the Year. It's even been described as the "first major biography of the trailblazing, controversial children's author."

On the other hand, it's had a mixed response from Amazon's own homegrown reviewers. Dave Ansell, for instance, comments:

I wonder why Fitzsimons troubled to write her biography as it offers little that hasn’t been said before. Briggs’s biography is over 100 pages longer. Fitzsimons gives chapter notes but no bibliography. Briggs has a bibliography. There are few photographs – Briggs gives many more as well as illustrations. At the end, Fitzsimons gives a brief account of how Nesbit has influenced other writers, including J K Rowling. In another recent biography, The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit by Elizabeth Galvin (2018), there is more about Nesbit’s influence, including a short chapter on Harry Potter, and information about TV and cinema films. This biography also includes a useful family tree, 50 of the Best Works by E Nesbit, and a clever ‘Edith’s Guide to Life’.

Elisabeth Galvin: The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit (2018)

On the other hand, if we turn to the comments about Galvin's own book, we find a comparably lukewarm response:

It is generally well written but there are a number of awkward usages and redundancies that would have been better edited out. I think the editor must have been asleep. Still a good read for E. Nesbit fans.

On the whole, then, having read these unvarnished responses, it sounds as if it might be just as well to stick with Briggs' lively account - or, for that matter, to hunt out a copy of the revised, 1966 version of Doris Langley Moore's biography.

Doris Langley Moore: E. Nesbit: A Biography (1933 / 1966)

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E. Nesbit (c.1890)

Edith Bland [née Nesbit]
(1858-1924)

Books for Adults

Novels:


1. [As Fabian Bland] The Prophet's Mantle (1885)
2. [As Fabian Bland] Something Wrong (1886)
3. [As Fabian Bland] The Marden Mystery (1896)
4. The Secret of Kyriels (1899)
5. The Red House (1902)
6. The Incomplete Amorist (1906)
7. Salome and the Head [aka The House with No Address] (1909)
8. Daphne in Fitzroy Street (1909)
9. Dormant [aka Rose Royal] (1911)
10. The Incredible Honeymoon (1916)
11. The Lark (1922)

Collections:


12. Grim Tales (1893)
13. Something Wrong (1893)
14. "Hurst of Hurstcote" (1893)
15. The Ebony Frame (1893)
16. [with Oswald Barron] The Butler in Bohemia (1894)
17. In Homespun: Stories in English Dialect (1896)
18. Thirteen Ways Home (1901)
19. The Literary Sense (1903)
20. Man and Maid (1906)
21. "The Third Drug" (Strand Magazine, 1908)
22. These Little Ones (1909)
23. Fear (1910)
24. To the Adventurous (1923)
25. E. Nesbit's Tales of Terror. Ed. Hugh Lamb (1983)
    • In the Dark: Tales of Terror. Ed. Hugh Lamb. 1983. Rev. ed (1988)
    • In the Dark. Ed. Hugh Lamb. 1983. Rev. ed, 1988. Expanded ed. (2000)
26. In the Dark (2000)
27. Man-Size in Marble and Others: The Best Horror and Ghost Stories of E. Nesbit. Annotated & Illustrated by M. Grant Kellermeyer (2015)
28. Horror Stories. Introduction by Naomi Alderman (2017)
29. From the Dead: The Complete Weird Stories of E. Nesbit. Ed. S. T. Joshi (2018)
30. The House of Silence: Ghost Stories 1887–1920 Introduction by Melissa Edmundson (2024)

Children's Books

The Bastable Series:

The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899)

• The Story of the Treasure-Seekers. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1899. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.

The Wouldbegoods (1901)

• The Wouldbegoods. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1901. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961.

The New Treasure Seekers (1904)

• The New Treasure-Seekers. 1904. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.

The Adventures of the Treasure Seekers. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1947. London: The Folio Society, 1993.

1. The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune (1899)
2. The Wouldbegoods: Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure Seekers (1901)
3. The New Treasure Seekers (1904)

Oswald Bastable and Others (1905)

The Psammead series:

Five Children and It (1902)

• Five Children and It. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1902. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1970.

The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904)

• The Phoenix and the Carpet. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1904. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1973.

The Story of the Amulet (1906)

• The Story of the Amulet. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1906. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1969.

The House of Arden series:

The House of Arden (1908)

• The House of Arden. Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone & George Buchanan. 1908. Puffin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.

Harding's Luck (1909)

• Harding’s Luck. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1909. London: Ernest Benn Limited / New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1961.


Novels:


31. The Railway Children (1906)
    • The Railway Children. 1906. Illustrated by Lynton Lamb. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1972.
32. The Enchanted Castle (1907)
    • The Enchanted Castle. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1907. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1960.
33. The Magic City (1910)
    • The Magic City. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1910. Facsimile Classic Series. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1980.
34. The Wonderful Garden (1911)
    • The Wonderful Garden. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1911. London: Ernest Benn Limited / New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1959.
35. Wet Magic (1913)
    • Wet Magic. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1913. London: Ernest Benn Limited / New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1958.
36. Five of Us — and Madeline (1925)
    • Five of Us - and Madeline. Illustrated by Nora S. Unwin. 1925. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1931.

Collections:


37. Miss Mischief (1894)
38. Tick Tock, Tales of the Clock (1895)
39. Pussy Tales (1895)
40. Doggy Tales (1895)
41. The Children's Shakespeare (1897) [aka Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (1907)]
42. Royal Children of English History (1897)
43. [with others] Tales Told in the Twilight (1897)
44. The Book of Dogs (1898)
45. Pussy and Doggy Tales (1899)
46. The Book of Dragons (1901)
    • The Complete Book of Dragons. Illustrated by Erik Blegvad. 1901. London: Hamish Hamilton Children's Books Ltd., 1972.
47. Nine Unlikely Tales (1901)
    • Nine Unlikely Tales for Children. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1901. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929.
48. The Revolt of the Toys (1902)
49. The Rainbow Queen and Other Stories (1903)
50. Playtime Stories (1903)
51. The Story of Five Rebellious Dolls (1904)
52. [with Rosamund E. Nesbit Bland] Cat Tales (1904)
53. Pug Peter, King of Mouseland (1905)
54. The Old Nursery Stories (1908)
55. The Magic World (1912)
    • The Magic World. Illustrated by H. R. Millar & Spencer Pryse. 1912. Facsimile Classic Series. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1980.
56. Fairy Stories. Ed. Naomi Lewis (1977)
    • Fairy Stories. Ed. Naomi Lewis. Illustrated by Brian Robb. London & Tonbridge: Ernest Benn Limited, 1977.

Non-fiction:


57. Wings and the Child, or The Building of Magic Cities (1913)
58. Long Ago When I Was Young (1896-97 / 1966)
    • Long Ago When I Was Young. Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone & George Buchanan. 1966. Introduction by Noel Streatfield. London: Beehive Books, 1987.

Poetry:


59. Slave Song (1899)

Secondary:


60. Moore, Doris Langley. E. Nesbit: A Biography (1933)
61. Streatfeild, Noel. Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and her Children’s Books (1958)
62. Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion (1987)
    • Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1924. 1987. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989.
63. Galvin, Elisabeth. The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit (2018)
64. Fitzsimons, Eleanor. The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit (2019)

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