66 John O’London’s Weekly, November 15, 1919.
67 Held in the Butler Library of Columbia University, New York, and quoted in full in Briggs, A Woman of Passion, 95.
68 George Bernard Shaw and Dan H. Laurence, ed., “Found at Last—A New Poet,” in Unpublished Shaw (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 108–9.
69 Quoted in Pearson, Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality, 114.
70 Weintraub, Bernard Shaw: The Diaries 1885–1897, 268.
71 Ibid., 228, 302.
72 E. Nesbit, Daphne in Fitzroy Street, 404.
73 Interview between George Bernard Shaw and Doris Langley Moore, transcript held in the Edith Nesbit Archive.
74 Shaw, Sixteen Self-Sketches, 6.
75 Weintraub, Bernard Shaw: The Diaries 1885–1897, 229.
76 Shaw, An Unfinished Novel, 35.
77 Ibid., 42.
78 Ibid., 88.
79 Ibid., 91–92.
80 Ibid., 77.
81 Ibid., 78.
82 Shaw, Sixteen Self-Sketches, 113.
83 Ibid., 113, 115.
84 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, My Diaries 1900–1914, The Coalition Against Germany (London: A.A. Knopf, 1923), 136.
85 Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The New Biography, 432.
86 Shaw, Sixteen Self-Sketches, 115.
CHAPTER 8
1 E. Nesbit to Ada Breakell, undated, Edith Nesbit Archive.
2 E. Nesbit to Ada Breakell, undated, Edith Nesbit Archive.
3 Podmore married Eleanor Oliver Bramwell on June 11, 1891. Alan Gauld, his biographer, writes: “In 1907 Podmore was compelled to resign without pension from the Post Office because of alleged homosexual involvements. He separated from his wife, and went to live with his brother Claude, rector of Broughton, near Kettering.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
4 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
5 E. Nesbit, “The Moat House” in Lays and Legends (London: Longmans, Green, 1887), 21.
6 E. Nesbit, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, 258.
7 E. Nesbit, The Wouldbegoods, 146.
8 E. Nesbit, The Red House, 14.
9 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
10 This series included “Morning Songs and Sketches,” “Noon Songs and Sketches,” “Eventide Songs and Sketches,” “Night Songs and Sketches,” “Spring Songs and Sketches,” “Summer Songs and Sketches,” “Autumn Songs and Sketches” and “Winter Songs and Sketches.”
11 E. Nesbit, The Red House, 18.
12 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
13 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
14 Eric Bellingham Smith to Vera Bellingham Smith, August 3, 1966, owned by Mrs. Shirley Colqhoun and quoted in Briggs, A Woman of Passion, 132–3.
15 E. Nesbit, The Red House, 87.
16 “Mrs Hubert Bland (‘E. Nesbit’)” in The Strand Magazine, 287.
17 Andrew Lang to Thomas Longman, July 18, 1886, quoted in Moore, E. Nesbit, 120.
18 “Lays and Legends by E. Nesbit,” Vanity Fair, December 4, 1886, later reproduced in The Globe, Wednesday, December 15, 1886, 8.
19 “Recent Poetry & Verse,” in The Graphic, Saturday, January 8, 1887, 22.
20 E. Nesbit to Berta Ruck, March 17, 1924, written in Olive Hill’s handwriting with a PS from E. Nesbit, Edith Nesbit Archive.
21 The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer, vol. 23, 1905, 511.
22 Oscar Wilde to E. Nesbit, in M. Holland and R. Hart-Davis, eds., The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), 287.
23 Oscar Wilde’s review of Women’s Voices, an anthology of poetry edited by Elizabeth Sharp, in “Literary and Other Notes” in The Women’s World, November 1887.
24 Oscar Wilde (writing anonymously) “The Poets’ Corner,” Pall Mall Gazette, Friday, November 16, 1888, 2.
25 Oscar Wilde, “English Poetesses,” originally published in Queen, December 8, 1888, reproduced in Oscar Wilde and E. V. Lucas, ed., A Critic in Pall Mall; reviews and miscellanies (New York, G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1920), 130; J. M. Barrie, “A Publisher of Minor Poets: A Chat with Mr. John Lane,” The Sketch, December 4, 1895, 6.
26 Coulson Kernahan, Swinburne As I Knew Him, with some unpublished letters from the poet to his cousin, the Hon. Lady Henniker Heaton (London: John Lane, 1919), 68–70.
27 Ibid., 65; Jerome K. Jerome, “Gossips’ Corner” in Home Chimes, new series 3, no. 2, March 1887, 155–60.
28 Philip Bourke Marston to Thomas Purnell, quoted in The Bookseller, March 4, 1887, 239.
29 Elizabeth A. Sharp, William Sharp (Fiona McLeod): A Memoir Compiled by his wife Elizabeth A. Sharp (New York: Duffield & Company, 1910), 74.
30 Louise Chandler Moulton in her introduction to Lyrics and Sonnets from the Book of Love by Philip Bourke Marston (London: Elkin Matthews, 1891),11–12.
31 E. Nesbit to George Bernard Shaw, February 18, 1887, Shaw Papers, British Library, MSS 50511.
32 May Bowley to Doris Langley Moore, November 11, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
33 E. Nesbit, “The Prince, Two Mice and Some Kitchen-maids,” Nine Unlikely Tales (London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1901).
34 Weintraub, ed., Bernard Shaw: The Diaries 1885–1897, 429.
35 Rosamund Bland to Doris Langley Moore, December 12, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
36 Ibid.
37 Helen Macklin to Doris Langley Moore, June 9, 1933, Edith Nesbit Archive.
38 Edgar Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian (London: Richards, 1937), 19–20.
39 Hubert Bland, Letters to a Daughter (London: T. Warner Laurie, 1907), 118.
40 Ibid., 190.
41 Review of Lays and Legends in The Graphic, Saturday, July 16, 1892.
42 “Bland, Edith 1858–1924,” in Dictionary of National Biography 1922–1930, 84.
43 The Primitive Methodist Magazine, vol. 71, Conference Offices, 1890, 756.
CHAPTER 9
1 Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian, 24.
2 Cecil Chesterton, Introduction to Essays by Hubert Bland, vii.
3 Hubert Bland, With the Eyes of a Man, 94.
4 H. G. Wells, H. G. Wells in Love (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), 68.
5 Richard Le Gallienne to John Lane, May 25, 1888, held among the John Lane Papers; Richard Le Gallienne, The Romantic ’90s (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925), 15.
6 James Lewis May, John Lane and the Nineties (London: John Lane, 1936), 128.
7 Ibid., 96.
8 Ibid., 33.
9 Richard Le Gallienne to Doris Langley Moore, August 26, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive. It is likely they had met earlier through Lane.
10 Le Gallienne, The Romantic ’90s, 165.
11 Frederick Rogers, Labour, Life and Literature: Some Memories of Sixty Years (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1913), 173.
12 May, John Lane and the Nineties, 127, 154.
13 Le Gallienne, “Woman as a Supernatural Being” in Vanishing Roads and Other Essays (London: Putnam, 1915), 17.
14 E. Nesbit to R. Le Gallienne, undated, Harry Ransome Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
15 Information included on a card written by Doris Langley Moore, Edith Nesbit Archive.
16 Rogers, Labour, Life and Literature, 173.
17 This is the opinion of Richard Whittington Egan and Geoffry Smerdon in The Quest for the Golden Boy (London: Unicorn Press, 1960), 255.
18 Brian Tyson, ed., Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews: 1884–1950 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 154.
19 Richard Le Gallienne, “Women Poets of the Day,” English Illustrated Magazine, vol. II, no. 127–32, 1894, 652–53.
20 Le Gallienne, Vanishing Roads and Other Essays, 74–75.
21 E. Nesbit, “The Bibliophile’s Reverie,” The
Library Chronicle, vol. IV, 1887, 96.
22 Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian, 24.
23 Ibid., 21.
24 Interview between Iris Bland and Doris Langley Moore, transcript held in the Edith Nesbit Archive.
25 “Gossip—mainly about people,” reproduced in the Dundee Evening Telegraph, Monday, May 7, 1888, 2.
26 Fabian Bland, “Only a Joke,” Longman’s Magazine, vol. 14, 1889, 390.
27 Hubert Bland “The Outlook,” in Fabian Essays in Socialism (London: Walter Scott, 1889), 205.
28 Hubert Bland, The Happy Moralist, iii.
29 Manchester Evening News, Wednesday, April 15, 1914, 4.
30 “A Bookman’s Gossip,” The Bystander, April 12, 1905, 88.
31 Ada Chesterton, The Chestertons, 56.
32 Cecil Chesterton, Introduction to Essays by Hubert Bland, ix.
33 Ada Chesterton, The Chestertons,56–57.
34 Tyson, ed., Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews: 1884–1950, 60.
35 Overland Monthly, series 2, vol. 15, 1890, 103.
36 William Archer, “Miss E. Nesbit: (Mrs. Bland),” in Poets of the Younger Generation (London: John Lane, 1902), 272–83.
37 Olive Schreiner to Havelock Ellis, October 22, 1888, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections. Available at www.oliveschreiner.org.
38 Olive Schreiner to Edward Carpenter, July 20, 1888. Sheffield Libraries, Archives & Information, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription. Available at www.oliveschreiner.org.
39 E. Nesbit to Olive Schreiner, quoted in Moore, E. Nesbit, 136–37.
40 Olive Schreiner to Havelock Ellis, October 22, 1888, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections. Available at www.oliveschreiner.org.
41 Hubert Bland, Essays by Hubert Bland, 35.
CHAPTER 10
1 “‘E. Nesbit’ the Poetess,” Glasgow Evening Citizen, Tuesday, September 17, 1889, 2.
2 “General Gossip of Authors and Writers,” Current Opinion, September 1889, vol. 3, July–December 1889, 196.
3 Margaret Dilke, “Select Socialists—Mrs Ashton Dilke—Syndicated Letter” in the November 1889 issue of Current Literature, vol. III, June–December 1889 (New York: Current Literature Pub. Co.), 390.
4 Ada Moore to Doris Langley Moore, June 6, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
5 Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian, 24.
6 E. Nesbit, The Railway Children, 2.
7 May Bowley to Doris Langley Moore, November 11, 1931, Edith Nesbit
Archive.
8 Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian, 24.
9 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
10 C.K.S., “A Literary Letter: Reminiscences of the Fabian Society,” The Sphere, September 25, 1915, 334.
11 “Jock and Saccharissa,” English Illustrated Magazine, vol. 20, 1898/9 (New York: Macmillan and Co.), 285–90; Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian, 19–20.
12 Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian, 26.
13 Ibid., 25.
14 E. Nesbit to John Lane, undated, held among the Lane Papers, Austin, Texas.
15 From an account given to Doris Langley Moore by Bower Marsh.
16 Adeline Sergeant to E. Nesbit, 1897, quoted in Moore, E. Nesbit, 173.
17 “Old Fashioned Novels,” Literary World, vol. 31, 1900, 71.
18 “The Secret of Kyriels by E. Nesbit,” review in Book News, vol. 18, 241.
19 “Current Literature,” Current Opinion, vol. 9, January–April 1892, 639.
20 E. Nesbit, The Red House, 178.
21 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
22 E. Nesbit, Dormant (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1911), 117.
23 May Bowley to Doris Langley Moore, November 11, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
24 Ibid.
25 E. Nesbit, “Picnics,” Daily Chronicle, June 11, 1910, 7.
26 Hubert Bland, “In the South,” Essays by Hubert Bland, 234.
27 May Bowley to Doris Langley Moore, November 11, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
28 Hubert Bland, “In the South,” Essays by Hubert Bland, 237.
29 Ibid., 238.
30 Ibid., 235.
31 May Bowley to Doris Langley Moore, November 11, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
32 Hubert Bland, “In the South,” in Essays by Hubert Bland, 242.
33 May Bowley to Doris Langley Moore, November 11, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
34 Ibid.
35 The Spectator, August 18, 1906, 21.
36 E. Nesbit, “The Treasure Seekers,” in Father Christmas, 1897, 30.
37 “Christmas Books,” in The Athenaeum, no. 3759, November 11, 1899, 653.
CHAPTER 11
1 Jepson, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian, 19.
2 E. Nesbit, “After Many Days,” Longman’s Magazine, no. CXXXILL, November 1893, 52.
3 “Mrs Hubert Bland (‘E. Nesbit’),” The Strand Magazine, 287.
4 Ada Moore to Doris Langley Moore, June 6, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
5 “Humanitarian Work in Deptford,” Kentish Mercury, Friday, January 25, 1895, 2.
6 Ibid.
7 “Free Tea to Schoolchildren,” Blackheath Gazette, January 15, 1892.
8 E. Nesbit, Harding’s Luck (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909), 1.
9 E. Nesbit, Wings and the Child (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1913), 179.
10 Ibid., 178.
11 Ibid., 98–99.
12 Ibid., 15.
13 Ibid., 29.
14 Ibid., 179.
15 “Entertainments at Hughes’ Fields Board Schools, Deptford,” Kentish Mercury, Friday, January 17, 1896, 5.
16 Ada Moore to Doris Langley Moore, June 6, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
17 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
18 Yorkshire Evening Post, Monday, December 23, 1912, 4.
19 E. Nesbit, “The Town in the Library in the Library in the Town,” Nine Unlikely Tales,245–66.
20 E. Nesbit, “The Criminal,” These Little Ones (London: George Allen & Sons, 1909), 107. Originally published in The Neolith, no. 1, November 1907.
21 E. Nesbit, “The Criminal,” These Little Ones, 107.
22 Laurence Housman, The Unexpected Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), 127–28.
23 Laurence Housman to Doris Langley Moore, July 12, 1931, Edith Nesbit Archive.
24 May, John Lane and the Nineties, 207–8.
25 Briggs, A Woman of Passion, 150.
26 E. Nesbit, “The Ballad of the White Lady,” English Illustrated Magazine, vol. II, 1893–94, 308–9.
27 Laurence Housman to E. Nesbit, undated, reproduced in full in Moore, E. Nesbit, 142.
28 “Lewisham Liberal Club,” Blackheath Gazette, Friday, October 15, 1897, 5.
29 London Daily News, Wednesday, December 11, 1889, 6.
30 Note from E. Nesbit to John Lane, quoted in Briggs, A Woman of Passion, 153.
31 Marshall Steele, “E. Nesbit: An Appreciation,” Harper’s Bazaar, January 1903, reprinted in The Writer, vols. 16–18, 1903–06, 8. Scrapbook albums compiled by the Steele daughters, Olivia (1894–1902) and Mildred (1896–1953), contain verses written by Edith and drawings done by Iris, a talented artist who later attended the Slade School of Art.
32 Laura M. Zaidman, British Children’s Writers, 1880–1914 (Detroit: Gale, 1994), 208.
33 Kentish Mercury, Friday, February 16, 1894.
34 “Dramatic Performance at New Cross Hall,” Blackheath Gazette, Friday, February 23, 1894, 5.
35 “Dramatic Entertainment at New-Cross,” London Daily News, Thursday, February 22, 1894, 3.
36 “Entertainments at Hughes Fields Schools Deptford,” Blackheath Gazette, Friday, January 24, 1896, 5.
37 “Humanitarian Work in Deptford,” Kentish Mercury, Friday, January 25, 1895, 2.
38 Fabian Tract Number 120, After Bread Education: A
Plan for the State Feeding of School Children. 2.
39 Alice Hoatson to Doris Langley Moore, July 4, 1932, Edith Nesbit Archive.
CHAPTER 12
1 “Literary Folk and Their Ways,” Saturday Evening Post, February 10, 1906, vol. 178, January–June 1906, 31.
2 The Bookman, vol. 23, March–August 1906, 480.
3 “Rational Exercise and Women’s Dress,” Cheshire Observer, Saturday, June 16, 1894, 2.
4 Berta Ruck, A Storyteller Tells the Truth (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1935), 143.
5 Quoted in Moore, E. Nesbit, 239.
6 Quoted in Colin N. Manlove, The Impulse of Fantasy Literature (London: Macmillan, 1983), 62.
7 Quoted in Moore, E. Nesbit, 196.
8 Interview between Noel Griffith and Doris Langley Moore, Edith Nesbit Archive.
9 Interview between Noel Griffith and Doris Langley Moore, Edith Nesbit Archive.
10 E. Nesbit, Salome and the Head: A Modern Melodrama (London: Alston Rivers Ltd., 1909), 73–74.
11 E. Nesbit, The Incredible Honeymoon, 118–19.
12 William Archer, “Miss E. Nesbit: (Mrs. Bland),” Poets of the Younger Generation,272–83.
13 E. Nesbit, The Wouldbegoods, 95.
14 E. Nesbit, Salome and the Head,62–63.
15 Walter James Turner, The Englishman’s Country (London: Collins, 1945), 15.
16 “The ‘Anchor Inn,’ Yalding,” The Courier, March 12, 1909.
17 E. Nesbit, Salome and the Head, 60.
18 E. Nesbit, The Incredible Honeymoon, 111.
19 Ibid., 112.
20 E. Nesbit, Salome and the Head, 58.
21 E. Nesbit to H. G. Wells, among the H. G. Wells Papers.
22 E. Nesbit to her mother from the Rose and Crown, undated, Edith Nesbit Archive.
23 E. Nesbit, “Coals of Fire,” in In Homespun (London: John Lane, 1896), 174.
24 E. Nesbit, The Railway Children, 175.
25 Ibid., 112.
26 Ibid., 117–18.
27 Ibid., 116–17.
28 Ibid., 117.
29 Ibid., 115–16.
30 Ibid., 116.
31 Ibid., 34.
32 John Sloan, John Davidson, First of the Moderns: A Literary Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 100.
The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit Page 37