The first critical edition of the beloved classics that established Edith Nesbit as a major children's writer provides extensive guidance to help today's reader navigate the enchanting world of the Bastable family. Nelson situates Nesbit's groundbreaking stories in the context of British popular culture at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Claudia Nelson is Professor of English and Cornerstone Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M University, USA. She is a member of the executive board of the Children's Literature Association for 2011, editor of the book series Ashgate Studies in Childhood 1700-Present (Ashgate Press), and winner of both the Children's Literature Association Article Award and the Children's Literature Association Critical Book Award. She has co-edited three anthologies of critical essays and authored four books on childhood and/or family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is general editor of a five-volume critical edition of rare source texts on the British family in the long-nineteenth century (Pickering & Chatto, forthcoming), and is volume editor for the first volume of that project, Growing Up.