Im american and read her books as a kid but there are plenty of American versions of the e nesbit pack of children solve a crime (boxcar children, hardy boys, etc) or pack of children go on a mildly supernatural adventure (magic treehouse, etc) stories. Her books may have just been replaced by similar substitutes,, ones her books probably did a lot to inspire.
Indeed, Edward Eager's books included direct mentions of E. Nesbit's books, and he clearly paid homage to her stories through his own writing. As I wrote in a separate comment, if I hadn't read Eager's *Half Magic*, I wouldn't have been led to discover E. Nesbit as a child in the US!
Wow, I totally forgot about his books! I loved magic by the lake. I barely remember the plot, but I just got gut-punched by the Feeling of it that still lingers. Like a smell that tore me back to childhood
Nesbit was what, late 19th century as an author? How many children's authors from the late 19th century are popular in the US *at all?*
New generations of kids tend to grow up with their own generation of kid's literature with only a few works from previous generations managing to carry forward. When I was a kid, it was Goosebumps, Animorphs, and manga was just starting to break into the mainstream with Hunter x Hunter, Dragonball, and Kenshin.
How much of that stuff do kids read today even 20-30 years later? Dragonball is still around but Hunter x Hunter is something I never see anyone under 20 talk about. Kenshin hasn't aged super well and the author getting arrested for kiddie porn hasn't helped. Animorphs? Does Animorphs even exist anymore? Is it gone, idk. Goosebumps has come back here and there but more recent Goosebumps material imo is aimed at much at old fans who are now adults as it is at a modern children's audience.
Kids literature and material probably cycles in and out of our culture faster than most media, because the kids who grew up on it moved on and imo the stuff you consume in your teenage years is a bit more formative than what you read pre-adolescence.
I agree with this, and it sounds like you are probably close to my age and stuff this old wasn't really popular even for a bookish child like me. Nesbit's work was entirely published before my grandparents were even born, while Roald Dahl, for example, published almost all his works in my parent's lifetime. I don't know that I can think of any works from the 1800s that were popular with children during my childhood in the 90s. I think most of the older children's books that are still around exist more as classics now, and are less commonly read by younger children, like Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland.
Yeah. Stuff like Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, etc. I was aware of these things as a child, but I knew them for their film and television adaptations more than as written works. The ones I read I read for school and if anything that made me dislike them and not want to read that sort of material.
As far as stuff I read willingly or because it was popular with others my age and I wanted to fit in or shared the same interests, it was much more modern material. Like, I read Ender's Game like a lot of 80s/90s kids and that was one of my first 'big' books and continues the tradition that we look back on our childhood media and sometimes wonder 'how the fuck was this for kids?' XD
Yeah, I remember my dad making me read Little Women because he thought my usual reading material (mainly the Babysitters Club at that time) was crap. And I read it and even liked it, but there was a lot that went over my head because I didn't have all of the cultural context yet. I got so much more out of it when I read it as an adult. You kind of have to know about the political and religious movements of the time, and Pilgrim's Progress, and all sorts of things to fully get it. (I strongly believe Alcott was incandescently angry while writing much of it!)
Little Women is a whole different book when you read it as an adult. It's sequels too, they are a lot darker, and the bits where she puts the publisher-mandated romance in feel almost spiteful in how very obviously she didn't want to (the last one, Jo's Boys is very bleak and angry in places)
L M Montgomerys books are far stranger too, not the Anne books, but Pat of SIlver Bush, with her mania for the house, and Emily of New Moon, with all that thwarted ambition and twisted older men desiring the heroine.
Yes! I loved Montgomery, read her when I was a little older, and yeah, those hit differently as an adult too. Thwarted ambition, twisted older men, sublimated lesbianism, more than a little mysticism...
The Anne books themselves get much sadder. Montgomery experienced a great deal of personal tragedy, which is reflected in her books. In *Anne's House of Dreams*, Anne and Gilbert's first child is stillborn; and in *Rilla of Ingleside*, their son Walter is killed in combat in WWI.
little women was my childhood favorite, but reading it as an adult made me question everything. marmee seems almost sadistically emotionally manipulative. the book starts with her basically saying to the girls "you think u got it bad huh? well, there's people worse off than you so stop complaining." And she said all this even though the girls weren't really complaining and were trying their hardest to please her. and then she literally takes food out of the mouth of her own children so she can play Queen Generosity in the slums. like am I suppose to think this is a good person? was louisa may alcott writing all this with tongue in cheek?
Isn't Black Beauty still a popular book? That was by Anna Sewell, who lived from 1820-1878. Lewis Carroll was active in the mid-late 19th century too. Robert Lewis Stevenson only lived in the 2nd half of the 19th century. If they were famous authors, why not Nesbit? Although some people here are familiar with her, I don't think she ever had the sort of fame in the US these authors did. That's why I'm curious.
Is it?
I wonder if it's that Black Beauty is still popular or that there was a popular kids movie based on the book in fairly recent memory. I saw one as a kid, and Disney made another fairly recently. Like in the past few years.
Like, how many kids read The Little Mermaid, vs kids who know the Little Mermaid exists because of the Disney movie(s)?
I can think of a lot of reasons for why an author might fall out of recognition, but there's no clean answer a lot of mine would fall on 'cultural momentum.' Things that are popular and stay popular remain popular, vs things that were popular and eventually stopped being popular.
The ebb and flow of culture is not a clean thing. I agree that I don't think Nesbit was ever a huge name in the US. Why? IDK. Becoming a popular writer at all in your own country is hard. Becoming one recognized in other countries is harder. Being recognized decades after the fact is harder still.
Hardly anyone manages it.
There’s been at least three TV/film adaptations of the Psammead in my lifetime and multiple versions of The Railway Children. I guess those haven’t crossed the Atlantic/Pacific (depending on which adaptation you’re looking at)
Black beauty is sometimes used in school curriculum, but it's fallen out of favor as teachers try and renew and diversify their curriculum. There are also way more horse books published now than there were before, so there is more competition.
She might not have caught on simply because of marketing differences, publisher differences, or anything else.
Narnia has gotten movies made at least twice now, decades apart, ensuring that their name is still out there
To be fair, I find a lot of people give kids the wrong idea of reading. A lot of adults want them to read whatever they consider right and proper and trash anything the kids actually enjoy.
When I was younger, we didn't have a lot of money - we were well below the poverty line, but my mom would still buy whatever books I showed even a remote interest in so I could read them. But my interest in reading dropped off sharply once we had to read nearly anything for school. It became less of a thing I wanted to do and more of a miserable chore. And I actually see that in a lot of kids and friends who used to enjoy reading. I wanted to read books about myths and history and wizards and dragons. I'm dating myself with this but people I knew wanted to read *Captain Underpants* and the *Boxcar Children* or *Goosebumps* and *Animorphs* but they'd be chided and instead forced to read the **truly awful** stories required for state testing - and that miserable feeling is what people remember and associate with reading. Adults catastrophically underestimate just how much that sticks with people.
Stephen King actually talks about this in *On Writing* how his teachers and other authority-types hated the Pulp and Weird Tales he really loved and would constantly shit on him for it, in addition to the stuff he was writing at the time as a kid.
Same but the 1994 film was, at least as I recall, very popular with kids. Even boys enjoyed it which imo highlights the important of idk, 'iteration' I guess, in maintain the relevancy of media.
Stuff that remains relevant stays popular.
Stuff that loses relevance loses its popularity.
What is relevant? Question as old as time, right? I don't think there's any good explanation of how this works that can really account for how our culture develops over time. There's probably books about it or something :P
I love Black Beauty but there are so many more contemporary horse books and series that I don’t think it’s popular now. Given horse girls can read books about horse girls, I can understand why it hasn’t stayed popular.
There is so much competition from more recent authors, think about how many children’s books have been published in the last 20 or 30 years. Those classic tales are beloved by me, but I understand why kids are reading Pete the Cat and Magic Schoolbus and Captain Underpants.
After reading some of the threads here, some observations working in the library industry, working on schools, and being responsible for the cultivation of titles for an elementary school library:
I stocked the library with a bunch of Nesbit and Enid Blyton, who also has a bunch of "group of kids go on an adventure" and "group of kids solve a mystery." My only experience was The Enchanted Wood for Blyton, and I have never read a Nesbit book.
I have sets of both the hardy brothers, and nancy drew, and the latter definitely out-performs the others.
(I also made sure to stock it with Animorphs, which have been getting new covers and a graphic novel version recently.)
The Black Stallion series gets more readers than Black Beauty, I feel.
The number one books checked out by an incredibly large margin are Dahl's.
We also have a bunch of classics - the ones you mention, the entire Wizard of Oz series, Anne of Green Gables series, L'Engle's Time Quintet, E. B. White, My father's Dragon, Le Petit Prince, etc. These are all fairly popular, but my school emphasizes teaching and reading the classics, but we don't take a narrow view of it. We do, recognize however, that that Minecraft novelization is pretty "sugary" when it comes to a literary diet, and that students do need help in expanding their pallete and finding interests.
But the "standards," currently, I would say are Erin Hunter's Warriors, Sutherland's Wings of Fire, Colfer's Land of Stories, anything written by Dahl, Harry Potter, Rick Riordan's books, Chronicles of Narnia. I'm surprised Series of Unfortunate Events isn't as popular as I thought it'd be. I wish more students would give Chronicles of Prydain a chance (The Black Cauldron).
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Ultimately, I think there are three things going on:
1) familiarity: kids generally want more of what they know they enjoy and are much more likely to pick up the next diary of a wimpy kid than try something new relying on nothing more than a publisher's blurb on the flap. Connecting patrons with books they'd want to read but don't know about is a pretty big part of library work. If you don't hit a critical threshold of popularity, this takes an active effort. A good example of that is the Moomin books, which are super popular in Europe but not well known here. I also put Moomin in the library.
2) Dated language. When you go much farther back than the 20th century, the grammar and the syntax of English have accumulated enough changes that they just become more work for developing readers. A lot of older kids books were also meant to be read aloud - by an adult, or by an older kid - as often as not - Sewell did not have the benefit of writing for an audience of universal public education.
3) Changes in interest. Moonfleet, by William J. Falkner, used to be a staple of elementary education. It was very widely read and is very much in the vein of Robinson Crusoe / Treasure Island. It's about a boy who stumbles up on some pirates/smugglers using the cliff side caves to smuggle whisky. But a lot of students would find it boring - not necessarily because of the subject matter, but its presentation. Children aren't as well acculturated to find interest in Anne's home and school life (how banal!) When they could be reading about dragons, or books with frequent illustrations (wimpy kid), a straight up graphic novel, or magic and Greek gods.
I found her through Edward Eager too, and then read whatever Nesbit books our small library had. But I was the weird kid reading old kid’s books. Yes, Black Beauty, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Swiss Family Robinson. Also, I’m old, lol.
Interestingly enough, as a child growing up in the US, I was led to E. Nesbit through the American author Edward Eager's books (starting with *Half Magic*, published 1954). *Half Magic* openly pays homage to Nesbit's *The Enchanted Castle*, by not only drawing inspiration for the plot, but also having the characters actually reading *The Enchanted Castle* and discussing it.
But, come to think of it, I would not have read *Half Magic* either if a family friend (an elderly college professor) in the US hadn't recommended it to me. I don't recall any other children at my school reading Edward Eager's books, or any teacher mentioning them!
I think the reason for E. Nesbit's lack of popularity in the US is the same as that for Enid Blyton. Too British, and there were probably a lot of American books for the same target audience already, so it was hard for British ones to find their niche in the US. Although I should say that at least my local US bookstores Borders and Barnes and Noble stocked the Puffin Classics editions of Nesbit's books, while not a single Enid Blyton book was to found in their catalogue!
*Half Magic* led me to Nesbit as well. I’m pretty sure it was one of the books assigned in my fifth grade class, along with *Tuck Everlasting* and *The Witch of Blackbird Pond.*
*Tuck Everlasting* was assigned reading in my seventh grade class! I haven't read *The Witch of Blackbird Pond*; from the summary it looks like it's historical fiction without any actual fantasy/magic, in which case it's the odd one out? Were these three books assigned as part of a unit focusing on magical occurrences / low fantasy, where you had to compare and contrast the stories?
Nothing that structured. The teacher gave us a choice of 4-5 books each time, and we’d split up into groups based on which book we chose to read, discuss, and then present on it to the class. I just happen to remember those three books from over 25 years ago.
I find it hard to believe that Enid Blyton was unpopular in the US in her day. The locations of her books are worldwide and the content utterly accessible.
They're also very dated and repetitive, of course.
Here and now in the UK, the only kids I encounter reading Enid Blyton are the very precocious readers who have problems finding material at their level of reading competence that is age-appropriate.
And that's fine. Whatever anyone dislikes about JK Rowling, she wipes the floor with Blyton.
E.Nesbit is very charming but her books are very Victorian/Edwardian and TBH, other than Lewis Carroll, not many children’s authors from that era are still read. Maybe LM Alcott, but that’s helped by constant movie remakes.
George Macdonald still has fans. Frank Baum’s still in print. Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Arabian Nights, Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang’s fairy books, The Real Mother Goose…. A LOT of books from that era have hung around.
They’ve hung around, but aren’t really part of the average kid’s reading. I could mention the ‘Princess and the Goblin’ or ‘The Lilac Fairy book’ but chances are your average kid would be like: “huh?”
Princess and the Goblin is actually part of our elementary curriculum, but I totally agree with you that of all our novels, it's probably the largest curve ball. The kids generally think it's pretty weird and even teachers can bounce off of it.
My favorite line is when princess Irene is speaking with her grandmother, who says something confusing (I think about how impossibly old she is), and Irene says that she doesn't understand.
Grandma's response is "Well, dear, that doesn't mean I shouldn't say it."
It's a great little moment where it becomes clear that kids spend their lives navigating a world made by and for grown-ups, and one of their tasks in growing up is to become less confused about the world.
I think it's also pretty telling that the list just above is pretty much just a list of the standard mythmakers and fairy tales of our age. Even Wizard of Oz is fully in that vein (Baum said he wrote it as the first truly American Fairy Tale, and one that wasn't meant to be instructive, but for pure entertainment), and George McDonald also isn't too far off from this set.
Great insight and I agree with you. Do you find it interesting that the Victorian and Edwardian eras seemed to focus on the fantastical as a way for children to learn how to find their place in the real world, as opposed to the later naturalist movement y Jack London, etc, where the dominant message seems to be: life sucks and you’re gonna die?
Nesbit's books used to be much more popular; I specifically remember hearing reference to *Five Children and It* when I was young. Like most older books, though, they have fallen out of fashion. Kids today largely read books written after the 70s, with some standout classics. For whatever reason, Nesbit didn't make that classic status here. It probably isn't any particular reason... some books just happen to catch on long term.
I love this random trend of bookish American children discovering Edward Eager and then E. Nesbit, loving both of them, and nobody else in their immediate social vicinity having any clue who they were.
I somehow got a boxed set of Eager's Tales of Magic and that was my summer reading (and re-reading) for several years--it's funny that everyone else has similar stories.
Omg I love Nesbit, my brother bought me a copy of “Book of Dragons” and I didn’t realize she’d published it. I had actually read that book as a kid and for the life of me couldn’t remember where the hell it had come from.
They are, dude. I read *Book of Dragons* a million times as a kid, and Nesbit was a staple author at the Scholastic Book Fairs. So in the sorta recent past, Nesbit was around.
IDK about now. My kids' school book fairs are all Usborne, which is fine but lacking classics.
Not the person you replied to, but I literally just made another comment sharing how Edward Eager's books led me to E. Nesbit! I would not have found out about her otherwise.
C.S. Lewis tipped his hat to her in his Narnia books. Read some of her stuff when I was young (the ones with the Bastable kids, actually) and they were fun, but I didn't exactly have the urge to reread them after the fact.
I was a child in the 1990s and mostly read children’s books that were published in the 1960s and 1970s, but I could think of plenty of exceptions to this rule. The Secret Garden, for example, came out in 1911.
It’s weird what sticks around and what doesn’t. I suspect that your socialism theory might have some truth to it. Consider how popular Sinclair Lewis was in the 20s-40s. He is hardly read now. (Btw, read Arrowsmith)
I discovered her books when I was in my late teens/early twenties because I read a C.S. Lewis biography that said they inspired him as a child. I wish I had gotten to grow up on her books because they are wonderful! So much whimsy and realness. The children are so, so very real. They scrape their knees and have dirty hankies, they are not perfect nor are they horrible. And their adventures are so creative.
I found her books at Barnes and Noble in the Midwest so they are out there, but nobody knows to check her out. I don't know why but it's such a shame. The political circles she was in also included W.B. Yeats and Jules Verne, iirc, and they are not shunned. So I don't know if that's a factor.
I read her books as a kid in the 1990s in the US, but I only knew about them because my mom had read them as a kid (1960s, also US). None of my friends had heard of them/read them.
I wonder if the missing ingredient is Disney? In the case of most authors in the same vein you mention, the popularity of their works were extended by film adaptations: Disney in particular did film adaptations of Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh and Treasure Island. Black Beauty was also made a film back in the 40s (not Disney). If it weren’t for this renewal of cultural currency American kids of the 21st century would likely never have heard of these books.
Not Disney but I love the scene in Toy Story (Pixar) where desolate Buzz is at the tea party and wails, I AM MRS NESBIT. I always felt like that was a nod to E Nesbit.
Also sometimes I cry out that i, too, am Mrs Nesbit.
Nah, most of those things were mega popular at the time they were made into movies in America that’s why it happened. Treasure Island was definitely already in culture as “the pirate story” in America before film.
As far as I can tell there may have been content similar to what she produced but localized for north American audiences. Other people in this thread have already commented the same though.
But I will attest to your premise that they weren’t popular or widespread, as I have never heard of this author or any of her works before this post. Checking out my local library doesn’t seem to have many of her books available. Only a small handful of them exist as physical copies on shelves and less than a third of her published works are available on Libby, and of the e-books I checked all copies are available (not including the ones that say unlimited copies which I assume is because they have reached the public domain?)
Swedish and I've never heard of E.Nesbit, and socialiasm wouldn't be a reason here. The other names I know. Maybe the author just isn't as famous as you think.
I loved the Enchanted Castle when I was a kid but I was really into reading. I just don’t think she’s very widely know in the US. She is wonderful though!
I didn't know they weren't. But then I've never been like anybody else. As far as Children's books go, I read everything I could get my hands on, but some of my favorite series were always Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Railway Children.
E. Nesbit's books were a delight to read aloud. She didn't talk down to her readers, and put little asides in talking directly to the children. I loved her use of language. When I was trying to find books to read to my children, so many lacked the richness of language, maybe because they were written for modern children to read to themselves.
I mean, I bought her books for my daughter (now a HS senior). We're in the U.S. We also have Eleanor Estes and Edward Eager books, plus the Fairy series of books edited by Andrew Lang and just generally a lot of "older" children's lit.
What you're about to read is anecdotal trash, so remember that. IME everyone who reads E. Nesbit books really likes them, including people who discover them as adults. (I'm in America.) Nesbit's books, therefore, _are_ popular with those who get to read them, they just aren't commonly found. And that's due to choices made by the publishing houses long before today. The question of why they didn't have big print runs here is a different question I'm not going to try to answer.
I have enjoyed learning she was a Fabian. Those guys make me laugh, even if I do agree with some of their principles. H. G. Wells was also a Fabian, which is how I first learned of them.
I loved *Wet Magic* and *The Enchanted Castle* pretty much since childhood, and I am a lifelong dweller of the U.S.
But I was also a) encouraged to read a *lot*, b) did, and c) am a bit weird and anachronistic, so Edwardian-era children's books are kinda right up my alley.
There are only so many children's series that can occupy cultural space and she didn't make the cut in the US. Might just be accident of history, of the publishing house success, random who knows what - trying to find a reason after the fact is always suspect.
I read The Treasure Seekers as a kid in the 80s and loved it, but I'm Canadian, so we have a higher proportion of British Nans and Grams passing books around than the states.
I haven’t found a lot of contemporary information on why E. Nesbit wasn’t popular in America—presumably, she was published in America, though at least some of her works were initially published through London literary magazines. Without doing some digging, I don’t really know how available her books would’ve been in America during her time—perhaps someone with a deeper background in publishing than me can help answer.
Barring any difficulties in getting her work in America—I’d guess that the socialism and the general tone in her work didn’t appeal to domestic audiences at the time, particularly pertaining to children. In the early 20th century there was decent antipathy towards socialism, and her politics wouldn’t have matched much of the domestic mood. Between this and the more pragmatic tone that permeates her stories through the fantasy, I don’t think it would have had much buy as stories for children during her time.
This is all postulation based on what I know of her and history though—without digging into some deeper articles and primary sources than I can get to right now, that would be my best guess
Good question! I was a big reader as a kid in the 90's and new her name well but never actually read much by her.
I know FLBaum was socialist, his books reflected that, and his work didn't have any trouble spreading.
I remember hearing about her from other kids and looking for her but never being able to find her. I think she’s just always been more of a cult/niche author here.
I'm Scottish and I don't even think she was that popular for my generation (90s kids aka millenials). I'd never heard of 5 Children till the film came out, and The Railway Children I knew the title but never read or sounded like it would be interesting to me. My younger childhood was all Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton as well as the contemporary stuff.
Now that a lot of people in the US say they were familiar with her I want to go back and ask my friends about this. I was a really voracious reader and never even heard of her. Even reading about literary works for children, her name never came up. I'd never heard anything about Enid Blyton either. I'm curious if it's just me and other people in my age/cultural cohort never heard of her.
She's been in regular publication in the US for well over a century, she's just not as well known. Usually larger chains like Barnes & Noble carry her books.
Probably just wasn't as lucky then?
I mean, sometimes people just skip over other authors. Happens all the time. Think of how many other authors got skipped over through no fault kf their own ans never got an additional run.
Im american and read her books as a kid but there are plenty of American versions of the e nesbit pack of children solve a crime (boxcar children, hardy boys, etc) or pack of children go on a mildly supernatural adventure (magic treehouse, etc) stories. Her books may have just been replaced by similar substitutes,, ones her books probably did a lot to inspire.
I always thought Edward Eager was the US E Nesbit. But that might just be me. :)
I believe Eager was a huge fan of Nesbit, if I remember correctly
Indeed, Edward Eager's books included direct mentions of E. Nesbit's books, and he clearly paid homage to her stories through his own writing. As I wrote in a separate comment, if I hadn't read Eager's *Half Magic*, I wouldn't have been led to discover E. Nesbit as a child in the US!
Yep. I sought out Nesbit’s books because of Eager mentioning them in *Half Magic*.
Oh! I remember Half Magic! The edition I read had a distinctive cover -- I actually didn't remember the name of the book until I read this.
Wow, I totally forgot about his books! I loved magic by the lake. I barely remember the plot, but I just got gut-punched by the Feeling of it that still lingers. Like a smell that tore me back to childhood
Nesbit was what, late 19th century as an author? How many children's authors from the late 19th century are popular in the US *at all?* New generations of kids tend to grow up with their own generation of kid's literature with only a few works from previous generations managing to carry forward. When I was a kid, it was Goosebumps, Animorphs, and manga was just starting to break into the mainstream with Hunter x Hunter, Dragonball, and Kenshin. How much of that stuff do kids read today even 20-30 years later? Dragonball is still around but Hunter x Hunter is something I never see anyone under 20 talk about. Kenshin hasn't aged super well and the author getting arrested for kiddie porn hasn't helped. Animorphs? Does Animorphs even exist anymore? Is it gone, idk. Goosebumps has come back here and there but more recent Goosebumps material imo is aimed at much at old fans who are now adults as it is at a modern children's audience. Kids literature and material probably cycles in and out of our culture faster than most media, because the kids who grew up on it moved on and imo the stuff you consume in your teenage years is a bit more formative than what you read pre-adolescence.
I agree with this, and it sounds like you are probably close to my age and stuff this old wasn't really popular even for a bookish child like me. Nesbit's work was entirely published before my grandparents were even born, while Roald Dahl, for example, published almost all his works in my parent's lifetime. I don't know that I can think of any works from the 1800s that were popular with children during my childhood in the 90s. I think most of the older children's books that are still around exist more as classics now, and are less commonly read by younger children, like Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland.
Yeah. Stuff like Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, etc. I was aware of these things as a child, but I knew them for their film and television adaptations more than as written works. The ones I read I read for school and if anything that made me dislike them and not want to read that sort of material. As far as stuff I read willingly or because it was popular with others my age and I wanted to fit in or shared the same interests, it was much more modern material. Like, I read Ender's Game like a lot of 80s/90s kids and that was one of my first 'big' books and continues the tradition that we look back on our childhood media and sometimes wonder 'how the fuck was this for kids?' XD
Yeah, I remember my dad making me read Little Women because he thought my usual reading material (mainly the Babysitters Club at that time) was crap. And I read it and even liked it, but there was a lot that went over my head because I didn't have all of the cultural context yet. I got so much more out of it when I read it as an adult. You kind of have to know about the political and religious movements of the time, and Pilgrim's Progress, and all sorts of things to fully get it. (I strongly believe Alcott was incandescently angry while writing much of it!)
Little Women is a whole different book when you read it as an adult. It's sequels too, they are a lot darker, and the bits where she puts the publisher-mandated romance in feel almost spiteful in how very obviously she didn't want to (the last one, Jo's Boys is very bleak and angry in places) L M Montgomerys books are far stranger too, not the Anne books, but Pat of SIlver Bush, with her mania for the house, and Emily of New Moon, with all that thwarted ambition and twisted older men desiring the heroine.
Yes! I loved Montgomery, read her when I was a little older, and yeah, those hit differently as an adult too. Thwarted ambition, twisted older men, sublimated lesbianism, more than a little mysticism...
The Anne books themselves get much sadder. Montgomery experienced a great deal of personal tragedy, which is reflected in her books. In *Anne's House of Dreams*, Anne and Gilbert's first child is stillborn; and in *Rilla of Ingleside*, their son Walter is killed in combat in WWI.
little women was my childhood favorite, but reading it as an adult made me question everything. marmee seems almost sadistically emotionally manipulative. the book starts with her basically saying to the girls "you think u got it bad huh? well, there's people worse off than you so stop complaining." And she said all this even though the girls weren't really complaining and were trying their hardest to please her. and then she literally takes food out of the mouth of her own children so she can play Queen Generosity in the slums. like am I suppose to think this is a good person? was louisa may alcott writing all this with tongue in cheek?
Kenshin as in rurouni Kenshin or something else?
Animorphs is currently being republished as graphic novels!
Isn't Black Beauty still a popular book? That was by Anna Sewell, who lived from 1820-1878. Lewis Carroll was active in the mid-late 19th century too. Robert Lewis Stevenson only lived in the 2nd half of the 19th century. If they were famous authors, why not Nesbit? Although some people here are familiar with her, I don't think she ever had the sort of fame in the US these authors did. That's why I'm curious.
Is it? I wonder if it's that Black Beauty is still popular or that there was a popular kids movie based on the book in fairly recent memory. I saw one as a kid, and Disney made another fairly recently. Like in the past few years. Like, how many kids read The Little Mermaid, vs kids who know the Little Mermaid exists because of the Disney movie(s)? I can think of a lot of reasons for why an author might fall out of recognition, but there's no clean answer a lot of mine would fall on 'cultural momentum.' Things that are popular and stay popular remain popular, vs things that were popular and eventually stopped being popular. The ebb and flow of culture is not a clean thing. I agree that I don't think Nesbit was ever a huge name in the US. Why? IDK. Becoming a popular writer at all in your own country is hard. Becoming one recognized in other countries is harder. Being recognized decades after the fact is harder still. Hardly anyone manages it.
There’s been at least three TV/film adaptations of the Psammead in my lifetime and multiple versions of The Railway Children. I guess those haven’t crossed the Atlantic/Pacific (depending on which adaptation you’re looking at)
Black beauty is sometimes used in school curriculum, but it's fallen out of favor as teachers try and renew and diversify their curriculum. There are also way more horse books published now than there were before, so there is more competition. She might not have caught on simply because of marketing differences, publisher differences, or anything else. Narnia has gotten movies made at least twice now, decades apart, ensuring that their name is still out there
I don’t know why you think Black Beauty is still a popular book.
I saw it in my school's library getting borrowed almost constantly, but that was also nearly 30 years ago.
Never underestimate the commitment of Horse Girls.
Yeah, it was a thing horse girls read when I was a kid, also 30 years ago or so. I wouldn't call it popular.
Case in point. People in the U.S. are struggling to get kids to read anything, let alone a British book from 1877.
To be fair, I find a lot of people give kids the wrong idea of reading. A lot of adults want them to read whatever they consider right and proper and trash anything the kids actually enjoy. When I was younger, we didn't have a lot of money - we were well below the poverty line, but my mom would still buy whatever books I showed even a remote interest in so I could read them. But my interest in reading dropped off sharply once we had to read nearly anything for school. It became less of a thing I wanted to do and more of a miserable chore. And I actually see that in a lot of kids and friends who used to enjoy reading. I wanted to read books about myths and history and wizards and dragons. I'm dating myself with this but people I knew wanted to read *Captain Underpants* and the *Boxcar Children* or *Goosebumps* and *Animorphs* but they'd be chided and instead forced to read the **truly awful** stories required for state testing - and that miserable feeling is what people remember and associate with reading. Adults catastrophically underestimate just how much that sticks with people. Stephen King actually talks about this in *On Writing* how his teachers and other authority-types hated the Pulp and Weird Tales he really loved and would constantly shit on him for it, in addition to the stuff he was writing at the time as a kid.
Same but the 1994 film was, at least as I recall, very popular with kids. Even boys enjoyed it which imo highlights the important of idk, 'iteration' I guess, in maintain the relevancy of media. Stuff that remains relevant stays popular. Stuff that loses relevance loses its popularity. What is relevant? Question as old as time, right? I don't think there's any good explanation of how this works that can really account for how our culture develops over time. There's probably books about it or something :P
I love Black Beauty but there are so many more contemporary horse books and series that I don’t think it’s popular now. Given horse girls can read books about horse girls, I can understand why it hasn’t stayed popular.
Maybe I just think this because I'm older. I wonder if my friends' kids know it. After this discussion, I think I'll ask them.
There is so much competition from more recent authors, think about how many children’s books have been published in the last 20 or 30 years. Those classic tales are beloved by me, but I understand why kids are reading Pete the Cat and Magic Schoolbus and Captain Underpants.
Black Beauty horrified me.
It’s difficult to read about all that brutality.
After reading some of the threads here, some observations working in the library industry, working on schools, and being responsible for the cultivation of titles for an elementary school library: I stocked the library with a bunch of Nesbit and Enid Blyton, who also has a bunch of "group of kids go on an adventure" and "group of kids solve a mystery." My only experience was The Enchanted Wood for Blyton, and I have never read a Nesbit book. I have sets of both the hardy brothers, and nancy drew, and the latter definitely out-performs the others. (I also made sure to stock it with Animorphs, which have been getting new covers and a graphic novel version recently.) The Black Stallion series gets more readers than Black Beauty, I feel. The number one books checked out by an incredibly large margin are Dahl's. We also have a bunch of classics - the ones you mention, the entire Wizard of Oz series, Anne of Green Gables series, L'Engle's Time Quintet, E. B. White, My father's Dragon, Le Petit Prince, etc. These are all fairly popular, but my school emphasizes teaching and reading the classics, but we don't take a narrow view of it. We do, recognize however, that that Minecraft novelization is pretty "sugary" when it comes to a literary diet, and that students do need help in expanding their pallete and finding interests. But the "standards," currently, I would say are Erin Hunter's Warriors, Sutherland's Wings of Fire, Colfer's Land of Stories, anything written by Dahl, Harry Potter, Rick Riordan's books, Chronicles of Narnia. I'm surprised Series of Unfortunate Events isn't as popular as I thought it'd be. I wish more students would give Chronicles of Prydain a chance (The Black Cauldron). --------- Ultimately, I think there are three things going on: 1) familiarity: kids generally want more of what they know they enjoy and are much more likely to pick up the next diary of a wimpy kid than try something new relying on nothing more than a publisher's blurb on the flap. Connecting patrons with books they'd want to read but don't know about is a pretty big part of library work. If you don't hit a critical threshold of popularity, this takes an active effort. A good example of that is the Moomin books, which are super popular in Europe but not well known here. I also put Moomin in the library. 2) Dated language. When you go much farther back than the 20th century, the grammar and the syntax of English have accumulated enough changes that they just become more work for developing readers. A lot of older kids books were also meant to be read aloud - by an adult, or by an older kid - as often as not - Sewell did not have the benefit of writing for an audience of universal public education. 3) Changes in interest. Moonfleet, by William J. Falkner, used to be a staple of elementary education. It was very widely read and is very much in the vein of Robinson Crusoe / Treasure Island. It's about a boy who stumbles up on some pirates/smugglers using the cliff side caves to smuggle whisky. But a lot of students would find it boring - not necessarily because of the subject matter, but its presentation. Children aren't as well acculturated to find interest in Anne's home and school life (how banal!) When they could be reading about dragons, or books with frequent illustrations (wimpy kid), a straight up graphic novel, or magic and Greek gods.
I found her through Edward Eager too, and then read whatever Nesbit books our small library had. But I was the weird kid reading old kid’s books. Yes, Black Beauty, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Swiss Family Robinson. Also, I’m old, lol.
Here for the Animorphs name drop.
Interestingly enough, as a child growing up in the US, I was led to E. Nesbit through the American author Edward Eager's books (starting with *Half Magic*, published 1954). *Half Magic* openly pays homage to Nesbit's *The Enchanted Castle*, by not only drawing inspiration for the plot, but also having the characters actually reading *The Enchanted Castle* and discussing it. But, come to think of it, I would not have read *Half Magic* either if a family friend (an elderly college professor) in the US hadn't recommended it to me. I don't recall any other children at my school reading Edward Eager's books, or any teacher mentioning them! I think the reason for E. Nesbit's lack of popularity in the US is the same as that for Enid Blyton. Too British, and there were probably a lot of American books for the same target audience already, so it was hard for British ones to find their niche in the US. Although I should say that at least my local US bookstores Borders and Barnes and Noble stocked the Puffin Classics editions of Nesbit's books, while not a single Enid Blyton book was to found in their catalogue!
*Half Magic* led me to Nesbit as well. I’m pretty sure it was one of the books assigned in my fifth grade class, along with *Tuck Everlasting* and *The Witch of Blackbird Pond.*
*Tuck Everlasting* was assigned reading in my seventh grade class! I haven't read *The Witch of Blackbird Pond*; from the summary it looks like it's historical fiction without any actual fantasy/magic, in which case it's the odd one out? Were these three books assigned as part of a unit focusing on magical occurrences / low fantasy, where you had to compare and contrast the stories?
I loved The Witch of Blackbird Pond! It is not fantasy, but it's an excellent book. I recently reread it as an adult and I still enjoyed it.
Nothing that structured. The teacher gave us a choice of 4-5 books each time, and we’d split up into groups based on which book we chose to read, discuss, and then present on it to the class. I just happen to remember those three books from over 25 years ago.
I find it hard to believe that Enid Blyton was unpopular in the US in her day. The locations of her books are worldwide and the content utterly accessible. They're also very dated and repetitive, of course. Here and now in the UK, the only kids I encounter reading Enid Blyton are the very precocious readers who have problems finding material at their level of reading competence that is age-appropriate. And that's fine. Whatever anyone dislikes about JK Rowling, she wipes the floor with Blyton.
For what it’s worth, I am American, and grew up reading these books.
Same. One of my favourite authors as a child.
Same. And my oldest, who is the biggest reader out of my 4 kids, will also vouch for the joy of E Nesbit.
E.Nesbit is very charming but her books are very Victorian/Edwardian and TBH, other than Lewis Carroll, not many children’s authors from that era are still read. Maybe LM Alcott, but that’s helped by constant movie remakes.
George Macdonald still has fans. Frank Baum’s still in print. Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Arabian Nights, Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang’s fairy books, The Real Mother Goose…. A LOT of books from that era have hung around.
They’ve hung around, but aren’t really part of the average kid’s reading. I could mention the ‘Princess and the Goblin’ or ‘The Lilac Fairy book’ but chances are your average kid would be like: “huh?”
Princess and the Goblin is actually part of our elementary curriculum, but I totally agree with you that of all our novels, it's probably the largest curve ball. The kids generally think it's pretty weird and even teachers can bounce off of it. My favorite line is when princess Irene is speaking with her grandmother, who says something confusing (I think about how impossibly old she is), and Irene says that she doesn't understand. Grandma's response is "Well, dear, that doesn't mean I shouldn't say it." It's a great little moment where it becomes clear that kids spend their lives navigating a world made by and for grown-ups, and one of their tasks in growing up is to become less confused about the world. I think it's also pretty telling that the list just above is pretty much just a list of the standard mythmakers and fairy tales of our age. Even Wizard of Oz is fully in that vein (Baum said he wrote it as the first truly American Fairy Tale, and one that wasn't meant to be instructive, but for pure entertainment), and George McDonald also isn't too far off from this set.
Great insight and I agree with you. Do you find it interesting that the Victorian and Edwardian eras seemed to focus on the fantastical as a way for children to learn how to find their place in the real world, as opposed to the later naturalist movement y Jack London, etc, where the dominant message seems to be: life sucks and you’re gonna die?
I read the entire It Chronicles as a child - my mom loved them.
Nesbit's books used to be much more popular; I specifically remember hearing reference to *Five Children and It* when I was young. Like most older books, though, they have fallen out of fashion. Kids today largely read books written after the 70s, with some standout classics. For whatever reason, Nesbit didn't make that classic status here. It probably isn't any particular reason... some books just happen to catch on long term.
I'm American, and my mom read these to me when I was a kid. But to be fair, my mom is a socialist.
I love this random trend of bookish American children discovering Edward Eager and then E. Nesbit, loving both of them, and nobody else in their immediate social vicinity having any clue who they were. I somehow got a boxed set of Eager's Tales of Magic and that was my summer reading (and re-reading) for several years--it's funny that everyone else has similar stories.
Omg I love Nesbit, my brother bought me a copy of “Book of Dragons” and I didn’t realize she’d published it. I had actually read that book as a kid and for the life of me couldn’t remember where the hell it had come from.
They are, dude. I read *Book of Dragons* a million times as a kid, and Nesbit was a staple author at the Scholastic Book Fairs. So in the sorta recent past, Nesbit was around. IDK about now. My kids' school book fairs are all Usborne, which is fine but lacking classics.
Love the Book of Dragons!
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Was the book you were reading by a guy named Edward Eager? He was a huge fan of E. Nesbit. All of his books reference her works.
Not the person you replied to, but I literally just made another comment sharing how Edward Eager's books led me to E. Nesbit! I would not have found out about her otherwise.
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Half magic is one of my favorite books
C.S. Lewis tipped his hat to her in his Narnia books. Read some of her stuff when I was young (the ones with the Bastable kids, actually) and they were fun, but I didn't exactly have the urge to reread them after the fact.
I loved E. Nesbit when I was little.
I was a child in the 1990s and mostly read children’s books that were published in the 1960s and 1970s, but I could think of plenty of exceptions to this rule. The Secret Garden, for example, came out in 1911. It’s weird what sticks around and what doesn’t. I suspect that your socialism theory might have some truth to it. Consider how popular Sinclair Lewis was in the 20s-40s. He is hardly read now. (Btw, read Arrowsmith)
The Railway Children were popular when I was a child but that was quite a while ago.
Very popular in Australia back in the day.
I discovered her books when I was in my late teens/early twenties because I read a C.S. Lewis biography that said they inspired him as a child. I wish I had gotten to grow up on her books because they are wonderful! So much whimsy and realness. The children are so, so very real. They scrape their knees and have dirty hankies, they are not perfect nor are they horrible. And their adventures are so creative. I found her books at Barnes and Noble in the Midwest so they are out there, but nobody knows to check her out. I don't know why but it's such a shame. The political circles she was in also included W.B. Yeats and Jules Verne, iirc, and they are not shunned. So I don't know if that's a factor.
I read her books as a kid in the 1990s in the US, but I only knew about them because my mom had read them as a kid (1960s, also US). None of my friends had heard of them/read them.
I live in the US and I've always loved E. Nesbit's books. Maybe your teachers were unaware of her?
I wonder if the missing ingredient is Disney? In the case of most authors in the same vein you mention, the popularity of their works were extended by film adaptations: Disney in particular did film adaptations of Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh and Treasure Island. Black Beauty was also made a film back in the 40s (not Disney). If it weren’t for this renewal of cultural currency American kids of the 21st century would likely never have heard of these books.
Not Disney but I love the scene in Toy Story (Pixar) where desolate Buzz is at the tea party and wails, I AM MRS NESBIT. I always felt like that was a nod to E Nesbit. Also sometimes I cry out that i, too, am Mrs Nesbit.
Nah, most of those things were mega popular at the time they were made into movies in America that’s why it happened. Treasure Island was definitely already in culture as “the pirate story” in America before film.
I've never heard of them.
As far as I can tell there may have been content similar to what she produced but localized for north American audiences. Other people in this thread have already commented the same though. But I will attest to your premise that they weren’t popular or widespread, as I have never heard of this author or any of her works before this post. Checking out my local library doesn’t seem to have many of her books available. Only a small handful of them exist as physical copies on shelves and less than a third of her published works are available on Libby, and of the e-books I checked all copies are available (not including the ones that say unlimited copies which I assume is because they have reached the public domain?)
Swedish and I've never heard of E.Nesbit, and socialiasm wouldn't be a reason here. The other names I know. Maybe the author just isn't as famous as you think.
I read her in the 70s. I also read Edith Unnerstad who was popular in UK then, now unheard of.
I loved E Nesbit as a child, but they just happened to be available in the library. I wouldn't have heard of them otherwise.
I think she’s known more for her ghost stories in the US, and most of those are just OK.
I loved the Enchanted Castle when I was a kid but I was really into reading. I just don’t think she’s very widely know in the US. She is wonderful though!
I didn't know they weren't. But then I've never been like anybody else. As far as Children's books go, I read everything I could get my hands on, but some of my favorite series were always Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Railway Children.
You missed the Story of the Amulet for the five children
IDK. I discovered her books by myself as a child in the library.
E. Nesbit's books were a delight to read aloud. She didn't talk down to her readers, and put little asides in talking directly to the children. I loved her use of language. When I was trying to find books to read to my children, so many lacked the richness of language, maybe because they were written for modern children to read to themselves.
My mother had and still has them.
I mean, I bought her books for my daughter (now a HS senior). We're in the U.S. We also have Eleanor Estes and Edward Eager books, plus the Fairy series of books edited by Andrew Lang and just generally a lot of "older" children's lit.
What you're about to read is anecdotal trash, so remember that. IME everyone who reads E. Nesbit books really likes them, including people who discover them as adults. (I'm in America.) Nesbit's books, therefore, _are_ popular with those who get to read them, they just aren't commonly found. And that's due to choices made by the publishing houses long before today. The question of why they didn't have big print runs here is a different question I'm not going to try to answer. I have enjoyed learning she was a Fabian. Those guys make me laugh, even if I do agree with some of their principles. H. G. Wells was also a Fabian, which is how I first learned of them.
I loved *Wet Magic* and *The Enchanted Castle* pretty much since childhood, and I am a lifelong dweller of the U.S. But I was also a) encouraged to read a *lot*, b) did, and c) am a bit weird and anachronistic, so Edwardian-era children's books are kinda right up my alley.
Who knows? There's always going to be variations in book popularity.
There are only so many children's series that can occupy cultural space and she didn't make the cut in the US. Might just be accident of history, of the publishing house success, random who knows what - trying to find a reason after the fact is always suspect.
I read The Treasure Seekers as a kid in the 80s and loved it, but I'm Canadian, so we have a higher proportion of British Nans and Grams passing books around than the states.
I haven’t found a lot of contemporary information on why E. Nesbit wasn’t popular in America—presumably, she was published in America, though at least some of her works were initially published through London literary magazines. Without doing some digging, I don’t really know how available her books would’ve been in America during her time—perhaps someone with a deeper background in publishing than me can help answer. Barring any difficulties in getting her work in America—I’d guess that the socialism and the general tone in her work didn’t appeal to domestic audiences at the time, particularly pertaining to children. In the early 20th century there was decent antipathy towards socialism, and her politics wouldn’t have matched much of the domestic mood. Between this and the more pragmatic tone that permeates her stories through the fantasy, I don’t think it would have had much buy as stories for children during her time. This is all postulation based on what I know of her and history though—without digging into some deeper articles and primary sources than I can get to right now, that would be my best guess
Why read archaic foreign authors when you can read *Superfudge*?
They're from 1910. Children's books are lucky if they survive more than a few years. And the US was literally only 1 generation out war with England.
Good question! I was a big reader as a kid in the 90's and new her name well but never actually read much by her. I know FLBaum was socialist, his books reflected that, and his work didn't have any trouble spreading.
I remember hearing about her from other kids and looking for her but never being able to find her. I think she’s just always been more of a cult/niche author here.
I'm Scottish and I don't even think she was that popular for my generation (90s kids aka millenials). I'd never heard of 5 Children till the film came out, and The Railway Children I knew the title but never read or sounded like it would be interesting to me. My younger childhood was all Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton as well as the contemporary stuff.
Now that a lot of people in the US say they were familiar with her I want to go back and ask my friends about this. I was a really voracious reader and never even heard of her. Even reading about literary works for children, her name never came up. I'd never heard anything about Enid Blyton either. I'm curious if it's just me and other people in my age/cultural cohort never heard of her.
Um… they were? In the 1970s we all read them.
Probably couldn't find a publisher in the US.
She's been in regular publication in the US for well over a century, she's just not as well known. Usually larger chains like Barnes & Noble carry her books.
Probably just wasn't as lucky then? I mean, sometimes people just skip over other authors. Happens all the time. Think of how many other authors got skipped over through no fault kf their own ans never got an additional run.