I have never read the Harry Potter books, although I am quite sure that I would like them if I did. I fell in love with reading at a very young age, so some of my fondest literary memories are of books of this genre.

One of the thoughts that always occurs to me, whenever I am reminded of the success of the Harry Potter series, is why no one has picked up on the works of E. Nesbit, whose books about the adventures of adolescent British children are absolutely wonderful. Not all of these books are magical. Some deal with children seeking treasure in ordinary surroundings. And these are immensely entertaining. But some are magical, and these are . . . well . . .magical.

Perhaps the best of these concern the adventures of four children and a baby. Titles include The Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet. In these and other such adventures, there is time-travel; magic carpets; meetings with an Egyptian Pharaoh and a Babylonian Queen; trips to Caesar’s and Henry VIII’s Britain; an encounter with a magical mole who can only be called upon by the composition of original poetry, written in his honor; another encounter with an ill-tempered animal from pre-history, who can grant wishes; an enchanted castle populated with frightening creatures; moral lessons to be learned, and much wisdom to be gained. The following provides a little flavor of these books.

There were once four children who spent their summer holidays in a white house, happily situated between a sandpit and a chalkpit. One day they had the good fortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyes were on long horns like snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes. It had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur--and it had hands and feet like a monkey's. It told the children--whose names were Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane--that it was a Psammead or sand-fairy. (Psammead is pronounced Sammy-ad.) It was old, old, old, and its birthday was almost at the very beginning of everything. And it had been buried in the sand for thousands of years. But it still kept its fairylikeness, and part of this fairylikeness was its power to give people whatever they wished for. You know fairies have always been able to do this. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane now found their wishes come true; but, somehow, they never could think of just the right things to wish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out very oddly indeed. In the end their unwise wishings landed them in what Robert called 'a very tight place indeed', and the Psammead consented to help them out of it in return for their promise never never to ask it to grant them any more wishes, and never to tell anyone about it, because it did not want to be bothered to give wishes to anyone ever any more. At the moment of parting Jane said politely . . .

Two of the central facts about Edith Nesbit’s personal life is that she and her husband Hubert Bland were socialists, active members of the Fabian Society, and that he was a ne’er-do- well, who cheated on her. The good news in this arrangement is that their subsequent poverty and unhappiness forced her to write wonderful children’s books in order to help feed their five kids.

Edith aspired to be a serious poet, and while it is not unusual for one or more of her verses to turn up in some older anthologies of British poetry, she is not known today for her verse. Some of her poems are tragically maudlin, reflecting her unhappy marriage. Others are gentle, sweet even, especially those that deal with nature, gardening, and such. But none match the quality of her fiction, with the exception, in my opinion, of “The Things That Matter.” This poem is different from her others, and while I have always especially liked it, I find that I like it more as I grow older.