Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

Edith Nesbit
(1858-1924) also strongly influenced children’s literature. Her main 
works were published between 1899 and 1911, which makes her late Victorian and 
Edwardian at the same time. New about Nesbit’s approach to fantasy are her ways of letting 
magic intrude upon the domestic reality of children and then solving the problems arising 
from the resulting clash. Just like real children, Nesbit’s protagonists only live in the here and 
now. Due to their lack of farsightedness, consequences are only thought of when they arise. A 
high percentage of dialogue renders the liveliness of their playful explorations of possibilities, 
facilitating children’s identification with the characters. Three of her best novels strongly 
influenced the development of British children’s fantasy: Five Children and It (1902), The 
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See also Clute; Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 754. 
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Compare Jacqueline Rose. The Case of Peter Pan, Or The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. London: 
Macmillan, 1984, p. 5. 

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Phoenix and the Carpet
(1904) and The Story of the Amulet (1906). The technique of letting 
magic intrude upon reality, established in her first fantasy novel Five Children and It, “has 
been a fruitful tradition in fantasy ever since.”
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Nesbit’s contribution to the development of 
children’s fantasy was to establish humour as an essential part, together with realistic 
renderings of child play and language. Like Carroll before her, she was not prone to heavy 
moralising and open didacticism, either. According to Cullinan and Person, Nesbit was also 
“one of the first to use the idea that time progressing within the fantasy has taken up no real 
time at all upon the return to reality”,
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a feature to be used in many subsequent novels, from 
Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles to Harry Potter. Deepened
in her time travel novel The House of 
Arden 
(1908), Nesbit set the rules for following time fantasies. Usually, objects cannot be 
taken from one time level to another, time travellers understand all languages effortlessly and 
must not or can not change history.
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