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Nine Unlikely Tales for Children
Nine original and, yes, unlikely fairy-tales, which include stories of the arithmetic fairy, the king who became a charming villa-residence and the dreadful automatic nagging machine.
All are classic-Nesbit: charming, novel and not afraid to squeeze in a moral or two — told with proper fairy-tale style.
* 1 - The Cockatoucan
* 2 - Whereyouwantogoto
* 3 - The Blue Mountain
* 4 - The Prince, Two Mice, and Some Kitchen-Maids
* 5 - Melisande; or Long and Short Division
* 6 - Fortunatus Rex and Co.
* 7 - The Sums That Came Right
* 8 - The Town in the Library, in the Town in the Library
* 9 - The Plush Usurper
All are classic-Nesbit: charming, novel and not afraid to squeeze in a moral or two — told with proper fairy-tale style.
* 1 - The Cockatoucan
* 2 - Whereyouwantogoto
* 3 - The Blue Mountain
* 4 - The Prince, Two Mice, and Some Kitchen-Maids
* 5 - Melisande; or Long and Short Division
* 6 - Fortunatus Rex and Co.
* 7 - The Sums That Came Right
* 8 - The Town in the Library, in the Town in the Library
* 9 - The Plush Usurper
314 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1901
10 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
About the author
E. Nesbit
1,042 books1,003 followers
Edith Nesbit
(married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) was an English author and poet; she published her books for children under the name of E. Nesbit.
She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later connected to the Labour Party.
Edith Nesbit was born in Kennington, Surrey, the daughter of agricultural chemist and schoolmaster John Collis Nesbit. The death of her father when she was four and the continuing ill health of her sister meant that Nesbit had a transitory childhood, her family moving across Europe in search of healthy climates only to return to England for financial reasons. Nesbit therefore spent her childhood attaining an education from whatever sources were available—local grammars, the occasional boarding school but mainly through reading.
At 17 her family finally settled in London and aged 19, Nesbit met Hubert Bland, a political activist and writer. They became lovers and when Nesbit found she was pregnant they became engaged, marrying in April 1880. After this scandalous (for Victorian society) beginning, the marriage would be an unconventional one. Initially, the couple lived separately—Nesbit with her family and Bland with his mother and her live-in companion Maggie Doran.
Initially, Edith Nesbit books were novels meant for adults, including The Prophet's Mantle (1885) and The Marden Mystery (1896) about the early days of the socialist movement. Written under the pen name of her third child 'Fabian Bland', these books were not successful. Nesbit generated an income for the family by lecturing around the country on socialism and through her journalism (she was editor of the Fabian Society's journal, Today).
In 1899 she had published The Adventures of the Treasure Seekers to great acclaim.
She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later connected to the Labour Party.
Edith Nesbit was born in Kennington, Surrey, the daughter of agricultural chemist and schoolmaster John Collis Nesbit. The death of her father when she was four and the continuing ill health of her sister meant that Nesbit had a transitory childhood, her family moving across Europe in search of healthy climates only to return to England for financial reasons. Nesbit therefore spent her childhood attaining an education from whatever sources were available—local grammars, the occasional boarding school but mainly through reading.
At 17 her family finally settled in London and aged 19, Nesbit met Hubert Bland, a political activist and writer. They became lovers and when Nesbit found she was pregnant they became engaged, marrying in April 1880. After this scandalous (for Victorian society) beginning, the marriage would be an unconventional one. Initially, the couple lived separately—Nesbit with her family and Bland with his mother and her live-in companion Maggie Doran.
Initially, Edith Nesbit books were novels meant for adults, including The Prophet's Mantle (1885) and The Marden Mystery (1896) about the early days of the socialist movement. Written under the pen name of her third child 'Fabian Bland', these books were not successful. Nesbit generated an income for the family by lecturing around the country on socialism and through her journalism (she was editor of the Fabian Society's journal, Today).
In 1899 she had published The Adventures of the Treasure Seekers to great acclaim.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
March 17, 2025
Not my favorite Nesbitt, but fun. Read at Mara Swait's recommendation.
I'm always especially grateful for LibriVox readers of this caliber. Cori Samuel put in this excellent work for free, and that is a great gift to the world.
I'm always especially grateful for LibriVox readers of this caliber. Cori Samuel put in this excellent work for free, and that is a great gift to the world.
February 9, 2024
not Nesbit at her best, but fine.
January 18, 2022
Found this 1923 edition of E. Nesbit's 1901 short story collection at an antique mall, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The stories are a mix of fairytales and what I consider traditional British children's stories, which generally involve children being transported to magical worlds (similar to Enid Blyton).
Nesbit, whose style reminds me a bit of Kate DiCamillo, isn't widely read in America, which is both surprising and a shame.
Back in 1964, Gore Vidal wrote a piece about this for The New York Times, opining that librarians censored her books because magic in children's books was "taboo." When you think about children's classics from the late 19th-early 20th century, Americans had realistic novels like Tom Sawyer and Little Women while England had Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. The Narnia books and The Lord of the Rings, are by British authors. Even today, Harry Potter is by a British author. The only major American classic that has a child being transported to a magical world that I can think of is The Wizard of Oz. I suppose with Nesbit’s books being censored in the US decades ago, they never became childhood favorites of Americans to read to their kids, and so here we are a century later, with only a handful of her novels in print in the US, and her short stories almost impossible to find without effort--though many of her works are in the public domain and available as free eBooks.
Part of what makes Nesbit's stories so engaging is that the children in it are often flawed and not entirely good and moral. Nesbit was known for disliking children, which is not surprising when you dig into her background. Nesbit had five children--but only two of the children were hers biologically. She was seven months pregnant when she married, and not long after, she learned her husband had gotten another woman pregnant and promised to marry her. Edith adopted the child. She had another son of her own, but a few years later her husband got her close friend pregnant and forced Edith to accept her as a housekeeper and adopt that child as well. The housekeeper got pregnant by her husband again, and two years later Edith’s younger biological son, Fabian, died at age 16. Is it any wonder she disliked children, having to raise her husband's three illegitimate children as her own while he carried on an affair in her own home with her former friend? And yet she dedicated books to each of her five children.
It's hard for me to pick favorites among these stories. The fairytales "Melisande", "The Prince, Two Mice, and Some Kitchen-maids", and "The Plush Usurper" were on par with Anderson and Brothers Grimm. But other stories where the real world and the magical world collide were as enjoyable, if not more so, than any contemporary story. "The Sums That Came Right" features a boy who discovers an arithmetic fairy in his school desk who begins to make word problems come true. The real world stories also had the added appeal of touches of the period. In "The Cockatoucan" a girl and her nursemaid take the wrong "omnibus" and end up in a magic world--the omnibus is remarkably similar to a modern bus, but there's a moment when they talk to the driver who is sitting behind two horses--yes, 1901 so no cars yet. The story also features an "Automatic Machine," which is described as, "those which you see in a railway station--greedy, grasping things which take your pennies and give you next to nothing in chocolate and no change." Yes, the same machines we drop quarters into now, and are always disappointed by the plastic toy that is never as good as advertised. It's almost as if the real world of Nesbit's time is a magic world for us. Just when you've almost forgotten this book was written over 100 years ago, because so much of it is familiar, some little detail reminds you.
I'll definitely be reading more of Nesbit's work, and am already well into a collection of her short stories for adults.
Nesbit, whose style reminds me a bit of Kate DiCamillo, isn't widely read in America, which is both surprising and a shame.
Back in 1964, Gore Vidal wrote a piece about this for The New York Times, opining that librarians censored her books because magic in children's books was "taboo." When you think about children's classics from the late 19th-early 20th century, Americans had realistic novels like Tom Sawyer and Little Women while England had Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. The Narnia books and The Lord of the Rings, are by British authors. Even today, Harry Potter is by a British author. The only major American classic that has a child being transported to a magical world that I can think of is The Wizard of Oz. I suppose with Nesbit’s books being censored in the US decades ago, they never became childhood favorites of Americans to read to their kids, and so here we are a century later, with only a handful of her novels in print in the US, and her short stories almost impossible to find without effort--though many of her works are in the public domain and available as free eBooks.
Part of what makes Nesbit's stories so engaging is that the children in it are often flawed and not entirely good and moral. Nesbit was known for disliking children, which is not surprising when you dig into her background. Nesbit had five children--but only two of the children were hers biologically. She was seven months pregnant when she married, and not long after, she learned her husband had gotten another woman pregnant and promised to marry her. Edith adopted the child. She had another son of her own, but a few years later her husband got her close friend pregnant and forced Edith to accept her as a housekeeper and adopt that child as well. The housekeeper got pregnant by her husband again, and two years later Edith’s younger biological son, Fabian, died at age 16. Is it any wonder she disliked children, having to raise her husband's three illegitimate children as her own while he carried on an affair in her own home with her former friend? And yet she dedicated books to each of her five children.
It's hard for me to pick favorites among these stories. The fairytales "Melisande", "The Prince, Two Mice, and Some Kitchen-maids", and "The Plush Usurper" were on par with Anderson and Brothers Grimm. But other stories where the real world and the magical world collide were as enjoyable, if not more so, than any contemporary story. "The Sums That Came Right" features a boy who discovers an arithmetic fairy in his school desk who begins to make word problems come true. The real world stories also had the added appeal of touches of the period. In "The Cockatoucan" a girl and her nursemaid take the wrong "omnibus" and end up in a magic world--the omnibus is remarkably similar to a modern bus, but there's a moment when they talk to the driver who is sitting behind two horses--yes, 1901 so no cars yet. The story also features an "Automatic Machine," which is described as, "those which you see in a railway station--greedy, grasping things which take your pennies and give you next to nothing in chocolate and no change." Yes, the same machines we drop quarters into now, and are always disappointed by the plastic toy that is never as good as advertised. It's almost as if the real world of Nesbit's time is a magic world for us. Just when you've almost forgotten this book was written over 100 years ago, because so much of it is familiar, some little detail reminds you.
I'll definitely be reading more of Nesbit's work, and am already well into a collection of her short stories for adults.
May 8, 2008
Really sweet short stories, and while they proclaim to be "unlikely tales", there are also some traditional fairy-tales included - and those happened to be my favourites of the lot. Especially "The Prince, Two Mice, and Some Kitchen-Maids" which was recommended to me by a friend many, many, many years ago, but which I'd forgotten all about, and didn't even know was written by Edith Nesbit until I suddenly heard it here. I'll be telling these to my kids once I get some.
January 14, 2026
These stories are lovely!
They are humorous and lively, with a hint of whimsical fancy. I would recommend it for anyone. With nine short tales to read it's perfect when you have a few minutes and a cup of tea, or want something to wined down with before bed.
Perfect to read to kids.
They are humorous and lively, with a hint of whimsical fancy. I would recommend it for anyone. With nine short tales to read it's perfect when you have a few minutes and a cup of tea, or want something to wined down with before bed.
Perfect to read to kids.
January 9, 2026
Light-hearted and simple, nothing stand out until the final tale where some scattered Christian principles burst onto the scene. Fairy tale and whimsy will always hold a special place in my heart, I pray that never dies.
September 13, 2017
Project Gutenberg edition, read on-stream on Twitch
December 16, 2020
Lo disfrute bastante. No va a ser de los favoritos pero me daria gusto volver a leer algunos cuentos.
October 30, 2021
Mí tío, Gonzalo Gayoso, hizo las ilustraciones
September 16, 2023
Nesbit adapted fairytale themes to her own stories and added little pieces of humorous side notes that make it sound like she is telling the story as we read it.
October 12, 2023
Great fairytale-like stories.
January 15, 2024
Fun stories
April 6, 2024
We enjoyed many of these fairy tales, but with some of them, my children had a harder time paying attention. Nesbit doesn't disappoint. These just weren't our favorites of her work.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 2, 2024
Good storytelling, but I think we need to read again when my kids are a little older, most of it went over there heads, I think.
January 19, 2026
Fun fairy tales, usually with a moral. Some with retold damiliar characters, some brand new and imaginative. Enjoyable.
October 14, 2016
Listened on Librivox. Good for the car while running errands.
February 27, 2012
Freakin' adorable. Highlights such as the arithmetic fairy and the fact that children are nearly never good ground these series of stories in a world that is recognizable, but still delightful. The perfect stories for reading aloud, in my humble opinion, and, without being coying, rather ennobling to boot.
April 21, 2010
I liked some of these quite a bit, if I remember right. The others I'm sure were good, but not probably what I was looking for. The Christening/fairy stories were interesting, just as in The Magic World.
October 12, 2019
Excellent, surprising, creative, and funny stories for children. Nothing is straightforward. Nesbit's magic is in full display. The audience is clearly children, but the stories work on several levels.
May 26, 2009
All I can say is fun, fun, FUN! These stories had me laughing out loud in public! I couldn't help it! Nesbit was a genius.
June 1, 2010
My favorites were the Cockatoucan, The Prince, Two Mice and Some Kitchen Maids and Melisande.
May 1, 2012
I liked the first story the best by far, but they were mostly all enjoyable.
October 10, 2012
I love all of her books. Too bad I didn't discover them until I was an adult. My kids love them too and since they are old you can listen to all of them on librivox.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews