E. Nesbit is one of the great children's writers of the century. Though known in her day for poems, short stories and novels, she is now remembered as the author of The Railway Children, The Treasures Seekers, Five Children and It, and many other stories of magic and adventure that are still triumphantly in print. Her readers love to think of her as reassuringly maternal, but this biography reveals her as a strong-minded, adventurous woman.