My new biography, The Life And Loves Of Edith Nesbit, will be published on 17 October 2019 and I love the cover my UK publisher (Duckworth/Prelude) has designed.
Edith Nesbit was a strikingly beautiful and unconventional woman. In May 1888, one-hundred-and-thirty-one years ago, a description of her bohemian household appeared in the Star under the heading ‘Gossip – Mostly About People’
Nesbit, the gifted poetess of Longman’s Magazineand the Weekly Dispatch, is known among her friends, literary and otherwise, as Mrs Edith Bland, wife of Hubert Bland. She is a tall woman of somewhat over 30, with dark hair and eyes. Although her features are not precisely regular, their expression is full of charm when they are lit up by a smile or animated by any absorbing topic. Mrs Bland has a soft, melodious voice, and her manner may best be described by the French term enlinerie [sic]. She dresses in Liberty’s fabrics. Mr Hubert Bland is a tall, broad, portly man, with a large head. He is dark, wears a moustache and imperial, and is a little under 40. The Blands used to live at Blackheath, but now reside at Lee, in Kent. They have two children [sic], a boy and girl, the former of whom now bears the familiar name of Fabian Bland.
Edith and Hubert had an older son, Paul, but he never seemed to make much of an impression. I’m going to be posting more regularly from now on about Nesbit’s extraordinary life (she knew EVERYONE). I do hope you enjoy learning more about the women who is arguably the most influential children’s author that ever lived. C.S. Lewis borrowed his wardrobe from a short story of hers and J.K. Rowling often acknowledges her debt to this most magical of storytellers.
Beside Every Man 