Nesbit was the author of much forgotten hack work, which included adult novels and horror stories; poetry, in which her real love lay; and children's books that propelled her to renown and remain classics in the canon. She married Hubert Bland, a journalist and writer and ran a household full of children, memorable impromptu parties, famous names and stimulating talk. Nesbit was a dramatic woman with a blazing personality, who erupts like a volcano into children's literature, heralding new ways of looking at children. Nothing about her was without controversy, however, including these verdicts. One modern critic sees her subversion as mere middle-class Victorianism in disguise,1 while her daughter Rosamund's husband said Bland outshone Nesbit in every way. Some bias may have influenced this view; Rosamund discovered she was not actually Nesbit's child at all, but the daughter of Bland and Nesbit's best friend, who lived with them. Nesbit herself was described by Bernard Shaw as audaciously unconventional. The Blands’ Bohemian openness, far removed from the shibboleths of their time, nevertheless concealed a surface homage to nineteenth-century respectability and ricochets of resentment.

As Nesbit lay dying, Iris, her own daughter, asked her if, knowing the highs and lows of her life, she would live it all again. Nesbit said yes, because it had all been so interesting. Iris's question points to a conscious gap between Nesbit's experience and fulfilment. Nesbit's response of interest, not happiness, contrasts with most of her children's books which conclude with finding the heart's desire. Elysium, she suggests is the closure prerogative of fiction, not reality. Her stories, preclosure, however, are an ironic comment on contemporary mores articulated in her narrative technique of a child's voice, which blurs the adult/child divide. This echoed Nesbit's own old/young nature. She saw herself and some saw her as childlike, though since she was known as ‘Madam’ or ‘Duchess', and had a succession of younger lovers, she was also a priestess among her acolytes. Nesbit's overlapping boundaries overlook prevailing authoritarian standards to anticipate a later social levelling of hierarchical power structures in which adult control and child status are equally significant.