The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit

The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit by Eleanor Fitzsimons is a Sunday Times Best Book of the Year and the winner of the Rubery Book Award 2020 for Non-Fiction.

Edith Nesbit is considered the inventor of the children's adventure story. Her brilliant children's books influenced bestselling authors including C.S. Lewis, P. L. Travers, J.K. Rowling, and Jacqueline Wilson, among others. But who was the person behind the much-loved classics The Railway Children and Five Children and It? Her once-happy childhood was overshadowed by the chronic illness and early death of her sister. In adulthood, she found herself in the midst of a love triangle involving her husband and her close friend, raising their children as her own.

Despite these challenging circumstances, Nesbit was playful, contradictory, and creative. She hosted legendary parties at her idiosyncratic Well Hall home and was described by George Bernard Shaw—one of several lovers—as 'audaciously unconventional'. She was also an outspoken Marxist and a founding member of the Fabian Society. Through Nesbit's letters and comprehensive archival research, Eleanor Fitzsimons reveals her as a prolific activist and writer on socialism. Nesbit fought against inequity, social injustice, and state-sponsored oppression, incorporating her avant-garde ideas into her writing and influencing a generation of children—an aspect of her legacy examined here for the first time.

Eleanor Fitzsimons, acclaimed biographer and prize-winning author of Wilde's Women, has written the most authoritative biography of Edith Nesbit in over three decades. She illuminates the extraordinary life story of this iconic figure, crafting a portrait of a woman where pragmatism and idealism combined to shape a unique mind and literary talent.