Nesbit, Edith
Nesbit, Edith (1858–1924),English writer whose children's books include many fantasies with a contemporary setting. Obliged to support herself and the family in the early years of her marriage to Hubert Bland in 1880, she did much hack work before she began writing stories for children. Initially these were about the Bastable family, genteelly poor like the Blands, and their efforts to restore the family fortunes. But in 1899 she contributed a series of modern fairy tales to the Strand under the title ‘Seven Dragons’—the beginning of a long association with that magazine, in which all her fantasies were to be serialized. The dragon stories, light‐hearted and inventive, collected under the title of The Book of Dragons in 1900, may have been suggested by Kenneth Grahame's anti‐heroic ‘The Reluctant Dragon’. There is a fabulous creature, a manticore, in the opening story ‘The Book of...
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