Synopsis

Forever remembered as the author of ‘The Railway Children’ and a host of other children’s books, Edith Nesbit was testimony to the maxim that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Prolific novelist and poet, and co-founder of the Fabian Society with her husband Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit was to the world at large a figure of conventional, if progressive, tastes.

In the relative privacy of her home she was the Bohemian duchess, obsessive searcher of occult mysteries, chain-smoking mother to five children, two of whom were actually those of her philandering husband’s mistress, Alice Hoatson, who came to live with them. Edith herself was lover of George Bernard Shaw – and later an ever-younger string of adoring young men.

This contrast between the public figure – author of lyrical poetry and children’s stories – and the private, often outlandish individual, makes the story of Edith Nesbit fascinating drama. Did she have any real regard for the rigid social conventions of the time. Were her young lovers simply a way of getting back at Hubert? Was the fantasy world she created in her children’s books, as much of an escape for her from the life she found herself in.

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