“Have you read it yet?” asks Kings Road trader Liz Emtage. “”Everyone has seen the film but the book is soooooooo much better.”

 

The festival book choice for 2024 is E. Nesbit’s I905 book; there are a number of editions of The Railway Children to choose from. 

 

The anniversary connected to the book choice is the centenary of the author’s death in I924.

 

E. Nesbit was unconventional in her time as the significant earner in her bohemian household. She was a highly regarded children’s author in the early twentieth century when women faced barriers in forging high profile careers.

 

She was part of pioneering socialist developments and curiously anti-suffrage. Eleanor Fitzsimons’ biographyThe Life and Loves of E Nesbit is a good place to start to unpick the pressures on this female author who outputted a prolific body of work and delivered some public declarations that seem not to fit together.

 

The festival community are excited to be exploring this British author. She can be seen to be mirrored in the mother figure in The Railway Children who writes from morning to night in her study as a sole family income earner leaving her children to manage their own time and activities.