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The E. Nesbit Megapack
COPYRIGHT INFO
The E. Nesbit Megapack is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved. Cover art © Kbuntu / Fotolia.
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The Railway Children originally appeared in 1906.
The Magic City originally appeared in 1910.
Five Children and It originally appeared in 1902.
The Phoenix and the Carpet originally appeared in 1904.
The Story of the Amulet originally appeared in 1906.
The text for “The Marble Child” is taken from the anthology Atlantic Narratives (1918).
The Enchanted Castle originally appeared in 1907.
The Story of the Treasure Seekers originally appeared in 1899.
The Wouldbegoods originally appeared in 1901.
“The Road to Rome; or, the Silly Stowaway,” “The Conscience-Pudding,” “Archibald the Unpleasant,” “Over the Water to China,” “The Young Antiquaries,” “The Intrepid Explorer and His Lieutenant,” “The Turk in Chains; Or, Richard’s Revenge,” “The Golden Gondola,” “The Flying Lodger,” “The Smuggler’s Revenge,” “Zaïda, The Mysterious Prophetess of the Golden Orient,” “The Lady and The License; or, Friendship’s Garland,” and “The Poor and Needy” are all taken from The New Treasure Seekers, a collection of short stories about the Bastable children (1904).
“An Object of Value and Virtue,” “The Runaways,” “The Arsenicators: A Tale of Crime,” and “The Enchanceried House” are all taken from the collection Oswald Bastable and Others (1905).
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 1858–1924) was an English author and poet; she published her books for children under the name of E. Nesbit.
She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later connected to the British Labour Party.
Nesbit published approximately 40 books for children, including novels, collections of stories and picture books. Collaborating with others, she published almost as many more.
According to her biographer Julia Briggs, Nesbit was “the first modern writer for children”: “(Nesbit) helped to reverse the great tradition of children’s literature inaugurated by Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, and Kenneth Grahame, in turning away from their secondary worlds to the tough truths to be won from encounters with things-as-they-are, previously the province of adult novels.” Briggs also credits Nesbit with having invented the children’s adventure story. Noël Coward was a great admirer of hers and, in a letter to an early biographer Noël Streatfeild, wrote “she had an economy of phrase, and an unparalleled talent for evoking hot summer days in the English countryside.”
Among Nesbit’s best-known books are The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1898) and The Wouldbegoods (1899), which both recount stories about the Bastables, a middle-class family that has fallen on (relatively) hard times. The Railway Children is also known from its adaptation into a 1970 film version. Her children’s writing also included numerous plays and collections of verse.
She created an innovative body of work that combined realistic, contemporary children in real-world settings with magical objects—what would now be classed as contemporary fantasy—and adventures and sometimes travel to fantastic worlds. In doing so, she was a direct or indirect influence on many subsequent writers, including P. L. Travers (author of Mary Poppins), Edward Eager, Diana Wynne Jones, and J. K. Rowling. C. S. Lewis wrote of her influence on his Narnia series and mentions the Bastable children in The Magician’s Nephew. Michael Moorcock would go on to write a series of steampunk novels with an adult Oswald Bastable (of The Treasure Seekers) as the lead character. Most recently, Jacqueline Wilson has written a sequel to the Psammead trilogy, entitled Four Children and It.
Nesbit also wrote for adults, including eleven novels, short stories and four collections of horror stories.
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
ABOUT THE MEGAPACKS
Over the last few years, our “Megapack” series of ebook anthologies has grown to be among our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The Megapacks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)
A NOTE FOR KINDLE READERS
The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your reader.)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.
THE MEGAPACK SERIES
MYSTERY
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack
The Charlie Chan Megapack*
The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack
The Detective Megapack
The Father Brown Megapack
The Girl Detective Megapack
The Jacques Futrelle Megapack
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack
The First Mystery Megapack
The Penny Parker Megapack
The Philo Vance Megapack*
The Pulp Fiction Megapack
The
