ABSTRACT
If one analyzes themes and characters in best imaginative literature for children, one finds that heroic and comic stories are written more frequently by men and “tender” stories by women. This chapter examines portions of life and work of an Edwardian author, E. Nesbit. Although she was a professional writer and journalist from the age of twenty-one, she produced nothing very good until she was forty. There is an excellent biography of E. Nesbit by Doris Langley Moore, all the more useful because it is written without psychological theory in mind. Anybody who attended meetings of the Fabian Society in London in the 1880’s or 1890’s would have known Edith Nesbit Bland and Hubert Bland. The Psammead is E. Nesbit’s most original creation, and as he has part to play in three of her books, it is important to try to understand what it is that has been discovered in this hole in the gravel-pit that was once a seashore.
