Edith Nesbit [married name Bland], was born on 15th August 1858 in London. She was the youngest of five children.
Their father owned, and ran, an agricultural college, but died when Edith was only three and a half years old.

Edith's childhood was spent mainly between boarding-schools and elderly relatives, both of which she hated. She was only happy, she recorded later, during the holidays she spent with her brothers.

In 1877 she met Hubert Bland, who was a bank clerk and fell in love with him at once. They were married on 22nd April 1880. Their life-style was definitely 'Bohemian' but they were both happy with the freedom that conferred on each. They had two children. He died, unexpectedly, on 14th April 1914.
Then, in 1916 she met Thomas Terry Tucker, a widowed marine engineer, and they were married on 20th February 1917.

Her writing covered a wide range range: poems, plays, romantic novels, ghost stories, and tales of country life, but it is for her children's stories that she is chiefly remembered. She just about invented the children's adventure story genre, with its additional ingredients of fantasy, magic, and time-travel. Much of her work appeared first, in serial form, in magazines before being gathered together and re-published in book form.

She was a heavy smoker throughout her life and eventually became ill and died on 4th May 1924 (aged 65) while living near Dymchurch on Romney Marsh.

Some of her better-known children's books are:
1899   The Treasure-Seekers
1901   The Wouldbegoods
1902   Five Children and It
1904   The New Treasure-Seekers
1904   The Phoenix and the Carpet
1906   The Story of the Amulet
1906   The Railway Children
1907   The Enchanted Castle