Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was an English author who published some sixty books for children, writing as E. Nesbit. She largely invented the modern children's adventure story, placing ordinary contemporary children in realistic families and letting magic intrude on them, a pattern later writers from Edward Eager to Diana Wynne Jones worked from. A founding member of the socialist Fabian Society, she wrote to support a household her husband's business failures had left insolvent.