The Treasure Seekers Series
Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) was an English writer and poet, who published her books for children as E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on more than 60 such books. She was also a political activist and co-founder of the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later affiliated to the Labour Party.
Nesbit's biographer, Julia Briggs, names her "the first modern writer for children", who "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 inventing the children's adventure story. Noël Coward was an admirer. In a letter to an early biographer, Noel Streatfeild wrote, "She had an economy of phrase and an unparalleled talent for evoking hot summer days in the English countryside."
Nesbit has been cited as the creator of modern children's fantasy. Her innovations placed realistic contemporary children in real-world settings with magical objects (which would now be classed as contemporary fantasy) and adventures and sometimes travel to fantastic worlds. This influenced directly or indirectly many later writers, including P. L. Travers (of Mary Poppins), Edward Eager, Diana Wynne Jones and J. K. Rowling. C. S. Lewis too paid heed to her in the Narnia series and mentions the Bastable children in The Magician's Nephew. Michael Moorcock later wrote a series of steampunk novels around an adult Oswald Bastable of The Treasure Seekers. In 2012, Jacqueline Wilson wrote a sequel to the Psammead trilogy: Four Children and It.
Among Nesbit's best-known books are The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and The Wouldbegoods (1901), which tell of the Bastables, a middle-class family fallen on relatively hard times. The novel's complete name is The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune. The original edition included illustrations by H. R. Millar. The Puffin edition (1958) was illustrated by Cecil Leslie. Its sequels are The Wouldbegoods (1901) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904).
Excerpted from The Story of the Treasure Seekers on Wikipedia.
The Treasure Seekers Series
| Author | Edith Nesbit |
| Country | England |
| Genre | Adventure, Children's Literature |
| Copyright | Public domain in the United States. |
| Book cover | - |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | - |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive |
| Read online | 1. The Story of the Treasure Seekers --Main Novel. Read by Karen Savage-- The Story of the Treasure Seekers is a novel by E. Nesbit first published in 1899. It tells the story of Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavius Bastable, and their attempts to assist their widowed father and recover the fortunes of their family. 2. The Wouldbegoods --Sequel. Read by Hazel and Alan Chant-- The Wouldbegoods, a sequel to The Treasure Seekers, reacquaints us with the six Bastable children. Again, the story is told by you-may-not-know-who, and the children find all sorts of ways in which to amuse themselves in the country during the summer holidays. The children do their best, but they do get themselves into trouble, right from the beginning, when their latest brainwave is to create a jungle in the garden. 3. New Treasure Seekers --Sequel. Reader: Collaborative-- The Bastable children fill their free time with entertainments that don't always turn out as they plan. But whether telling fortunes at a fete, unwittingly assisting an elopement, reforming their nasty cousin Archibald or even getting arrested, it is all good fun, and usually in a good cause. 4. Oswald Bastable and Others --Sequel. No audio-- Four more stories about the Bastable children and a collection of short stories by the author. |