![]() She was generous with her time, her money and her husband. Her home at Well Hall, in Eltham, was a lively hub for young writers, artists and Fabians a place, HG Wells recalled, “to which one rushed down from town at the week-end to snatch one’s bed before anyone else got it”. Vibrantly attractive and adored by her many proteges and readers, she was what they called in those days “advanced” – a committed socialist (she and her husband Hubert Bland were among the earliest members of the Fabian Society) who wore free-flowing clothes, gave charitably and wrote ferociously against poverty, and let her children play barefoot in the garden. ![]() She was in person at once quite awe-inspiring and a bit of a nightmare, able to weather tragedy and yet a queen of melodrama, a self-supporting writer who opposed women’s suffrage. It’s not just that Nesbit’s books are brilliant: her life is also brilliant material for one. ![]() Mrs Bland, as she was known for most of her life (a misnomer if ever there was one), was one of the great children’s writers, responsible for The Railway Children, the Bastable series (which included The Wouldbegoods) and the Psammead series, in which a bad-tempered “sand fairy” livens up the novels Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet. ![]()
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