Edith Nesbit is considered the inventor of the children's adventure story and her children's books influenced authors including C.S. Lewis, P.L. Travers, J.K. Rowling, and Jacqueline Wilson, to name but a few. Her once-happy childhood was eclipsed by the chronic illness and early death of her sister. In adulthood, she found herself at the centre of a love triangle between her husband and her close friend. She raised their children as her own. Yet despite these troubling 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'. Through Nesbit's letters and deep archival research, Eleanor Fitzsimons reveals Edith Nesbit as a prolific activist and writer on socialism. Nesbit railed against inequity, social injustice and state-sponsored oppression and incorporated her avant-garde ideas into her writing, influencing a generation of children an aspect of her legacy examined here for the first time.
