The Religious Imagination of E. Nesbit (1858-1942) 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.