The Religious Imagination of E. Nesbit (1858-1924)

Abstract

<p><i>The Religious Imagination of E. Nesbit (1858-1942)</i> investigates the influence of Christian ideas and values across the oeuvre of Edith Nesbit (1858- 1924). A committed Socialist, Nesbit was a highly regarded author of adventure and fantasy stories for children, and she is best known to this day for this work. However, she also published gothic and romance novels, wrote multiple collections of poetry, and delivered lectures and wrote a book on child development. The contemporary view of Nesbit is as a children’s author, specialising in humorous fantasy adventures, an author shaped by Edwardian rejection of Victorian mores, and one strongly influenced by her Socialist connections. However, as this thesis will argue, religious ideas were central to her work: they shaped her imagination and motivated her ideological concerns, which she explored using forms traditionally found in religious or pietistic texts. This thesis uses a variety of historical-critical, literary critical and biographical approaches to explore the impact of religious thinking in Nesbit’s oeuvre. Accordingly, this study is developed through close reading of selected examples of her work from several moments across her career: her poetry, her prose, her children’s writing. In doing so, the thesis demonstrates how religious thinking provides a crucial yet underexamined lens for understanding Nesbit’s imaginative and moral vision, a vision shaping and shaped by her political commitments and her concern for and attentiveness to childhood as a crucial moment of moral formation. Operating within a distinctly theological framework, Nesbit’s depiction of the supernatural, the fantastic and the magical form is a particular focus of this thesis allowing a reassessment of a Victorian author who defies simplistic categorisation in terms of religious adherence and expression.</p>