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Jun. 1st, 2008 01:16 pmAfter reading The Magic City and remembering how much I love E. Nesbit, I had a sudden strong and irresistible urge to find out ALL ABOUT her, and promptly went to the library to pick up the first biography I could find, which happened to be Julia Briggs' A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit 1858-1928 (the title of which I cannot help but hate, but this is neither here nor there.) The biography itself was pretty comprehensive, although the author had a definite tendency to overidentify Nesbit's works with her life - by which I mean, there were obvious and self-confessed places where she drew upon her life in her fiction, but I still think Briggs often took it a step too far. However, the book totally fulfilled my guilty cravings for hilarious dead-author gossip. It turns out that E. Nesbit's life was full of RIDICULOUS drama: adultery! pregnancy out of wedlock! accusations of incest! salty sea captains! I have learned from it some useful lessons of life, which I will now relate:
1. If you are dying of tuberculosis, DO NOT forget to tell your tragic blind poet boyfriend. He will be very distraught when he accidentally stumbles across your cold dead corpse.
2. If you are a Victorian lady, DO NOT allow yourself to get pregnant by anyone called Hubert Bland. For one thing, he probably has another fiancee living at his mother's; for another, when he finally marries you, seven months into the pregnancy, you will be stuck with the name of 'Mrs. Bland' forever (making it no surprise that you choose to use your maiden name Nesbit in your writings).
3. DO NOT stalk George Bernard Shaw after he decides your affair is over. He will just get satirical about it.
4. If your best friend becomes mysteriously pregnant after you have started inviting her to hang out with you and your husband, DO NOT invite her to live with you on a permanent basis and offer to adopt her baby. It will inevitably become very awkward when it turns out the baby is your husband's and create much psychological trauma for the whole family, especially the baby girl who grows up wondering why mummy didn't love her like the others.
5. DO NOT fall in love with one of your aunt's boytoys (of which E. Nesbit apparently had many). This is another situation that will inevitably become awkward, especially once you are married to him and must attend family reunions.
6. If you have been caught red-handed trying to seduce/elope with one of the Junior Blands, and the famous Mr. Bland Sr., your rival for control of your Socialist party, has proceeded to beat you up publicly on a major railway line, throwing a tantrum and claiming that you were just trying to rescue her because you thought Mr. Bland Sr. was a creep who had incestuous designs on her will probably not get you very far. EVEN IF you are H. G. Wells.
7. Salty sea captains make much better husbands than sex-addict socialists, and also will allow you to continue to look cool, Bohemian, sexy, and liberal-minded about class differences, even when you are well into your sixties.
8. DO NOT publish all your books before Disney starts making its push about copyright laws, because then Michael Moorcock can take your cheerful Edwardian boy-hero Oswald Bastable and write angsty novels about him D: D: D:.
1. If you are dying of tuberculosis, DO NOT forget to tell your tragic blind poet boyfriend. He will be very distraught when he accidentally stumbles across your cold dead corpse.
2. If you are a Victorian lady, DO NOT allow yourself to get pregnant by anyone called Hubert Bland. For one thing, he probably has another fiancee living at his mother's; for another, when he finally marries you, seven months into the pregnancy, you will be stuck with the name of 'Mrs. Bland' forever (making it no surprise that you choose to use your maiden name Nesbit in your writings).
3. DO NOT stalk George Bernard Shaw after he decides your affair is over. He will just get satirical about it.
4. If your best friend becomes mysteriously pregnant after you have started inviting her to hang out with you and your husband, DO NOT invite her to live with you on a permanent basis and offer to adopt her baby. It will inevitably become very awkward when it turns out the baby is your husband's and create much psychological trauma for the whole family, especially the baby girl who grows up wondering why mummy didn't love her like the others.
5. DO NOT fall in love with one of your aunt's boytoys (of which E. Nesbit apparently had many). This is another situation that will inevitably become awkward, especially once you are married to him and must attend family reunions.
6. If you have been caught red-handed trying to seduce/elope with one of the Junior Blands, and the famous Mr. Bland Sr., your rival for control of your Socialist party, has proceeded to beat you up publicly on a major railway line, throwing a tantrum and claiming that you were just trying to rescue her because you thought Mr. Bland Sr. was a creep who had incestuous designs on her will probably not get you very far. EVEN IF you are H. G. Wells.
7. Salty sea captains make much better husbands than sex-addict socialists, and also will allow you to continue to look cool, Bohemian, sexy, and liberal-minded about class differences, even when you are well into your sixties.
8. DO NOT publish all your books before Disney starts making its push about copyright laws, because then Michael Moorcock can take your cheerful Edwardian boy-hero Oswald Bastable and write angsty novels about him D: D: D:.
