ABSTRACT
In contrast to practical schemes, some Utopian communities were intricately designed yet remained very largely in the realm of imagination. A contemporary of Barrie was Edith Nesbit, who also captured the imagination of a generation of Edwardian children. The visitors escaped, of course, but once again the obvious lesson was that paradise was an elusive concept, easy to imagine but apparently impossible to achieve in a lasting form. In Adventures of the Wishing Chair, the children, Mollie and Peter, alight on a chair which periodically grows wings and carries them to imaginary places. This simple device leads to meetings with giants and goblins, witches and wizards, and journeys to such places as the land of dreams and the disappearing island. Sure enough the island that the children discover, with their pixie companion, is enticingly attractive: 'a small and beautiful island. It was not only children who were treated to tales of impossible places.
