E. Nesbit was one of the greatest children's novelists, in Wings and the Child, she writes about the importance of play in the lives of children. She believes that play alone can fully develop their imagination.

It is often said that if you want to make the world a better place, start with children! Do you still remember what it was like to be a child? It was frustrating, and you often felt helpless, but it was also magical and carefree. We were all children once, and this is Nesbit’s main reminder to us all. This autobiographical essay explains Nesbit’s views on childhood and upbringing. She encourages every adult to teach children about creativity and to never dampen their spirits. She offers specific examples on how to motivate children to be inventive, not only for the benefit of their childhoods but for everyone who has forgotten the magic of imagination. Born in Kennington in 1858, Edith Nesbit wrote and co-authored over 60 beloved adventures at the beginning of the 20th century. Among her most popular books are "The Story of the Treasure-Seekers" (1899), "The Phoenix and the Carpet" (1904), and "The Railway Children" (1906). Many of her works became adapted to musicals, movies, and TV shows. Along with her husband Hubert Bland, she was among the first members of the Fabian society - a socialist debating club. A path in London close to her home was named "Railway Children Walk" in her honor, manifesting her legacy as one of the pioneers within the children’s fantasy genre.

Children in Culture is one of the first fully multi- and interdisciplinary collections of essays on theoretical approaches to childhood and formulates and presents new and exciting ideas about the construction of childhood as a cultural identity. The ten original chapters have been written especially for this volume by some of the most eminent writers on childhood in their fields: psychology (Valerie Walkerdine; Rex and Wendy Stainton Rogers), history (Jenny Bourne Taylor; Kimberly Reynolds; Paul Yates), critical theory (Erica Burman), literary criticism (Margarida Morgado; Sara Thornton), children's literature criticism (Karin Lesnik-Oberstein; Stephen Thomson), and film and drama theory (Joe Kelleher).

Imagine being one of the most well-loved children’s authors of all time, yet your readers don’t know if you’re a man or a woman. Or even your real name. E. Nesbit is really Edith Nesbit, who wrote an extraordinary 98 novels, plays and poetry collections for children and adults between 1885 and 1923. She is credited as the first modern writer for children whose work has influenced authors from Oscar Wilde to C.S. Lewis, Noël Coward to J.K. Rowling. Even though it was published more than 100 years ago, The Railway Children remains one of the most popular children’s books ever written and it has never been out of print. But for Edith, the truth of her life is stranger than her fiction – and it’s a truth she was keen to hide from the public. Edith’s father died when she was four, resulting in a peripatetic childhood across Europe. At 21 years old she was seven months’ pregnant when she married a penniless libertine who became a famous journalist, Hubert Bland. Together as early socialists they were founding members of the Fabian Society, from which the Labour Party has its foundations. A Bohemian and an eccentric, Edith became a mother of five children – two of whom she adopted in secret after her husband had an affair with a close friend (who subsequently lived with them as their housekeeper). It was shortly after the sudden death of her beloved son that Edith wrote her first bestseller in 1899, a groundbreaker that dramatically changed the course of children’s literature. On the eve of World War I, Edith’s husband died and she married a captain of the Woolwich Ferry. A cheerful cockney sparrow, Tommy Tucker proved to be Edith’s unwitting romantic hero who loved and cherished her until she died in near-poverty on the Romney Marshes of Kent.

Animals, Museum Culture and Children’s Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Curious Beasties explores the relationship between the zoological and palaeontological specimens brought back from around the world in the long nineteenth century—be they alive, stuffed or fossilised—and the development of children’s literature at this time. Children’s literature emerged as dizzying numbers of new species flooded into Britain with scientific expeditions, from giraffes and hippopotami to kangaroos, wombats, platypuses or sloths. As the book argues, late Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian children’s writers took part in the urge for mass education and presented the world and its curious creatures to children, often borrowing from their museum culture and its objects to map out that world. This original exploration illuminates how children’s literature dealt with the new ordering of the world, offering a unique viewpoint on the construction of science in the long nineteenth century.