Edith again adopted Hoatson's child, John. Hoatson remained with them as a housekeeper and secretary and became pregnant by Bland again 13 years later. After she discovered the truth, she and her husband quarrelled violently and she suggested that Hoatson and the baby, Rosamund, should leave her husband threatened to leave Edith if she disowned the baby and its mother. She had previously agreed to adopt Hoatson's child and allow Hoatson to live with her as their housekeeper. A more serious blow came in 1886, when she discovered that her friend, Alice Hoatson, was pregnant by him.

Early on, Nesbit found that another woman believed she was Hubert's fiancée and had also borne him a child.

Seven months pregnant, she married Bland on 22 April 1880, but did not initially live with him, as Bland remained with his mother. In 1877, at the age of 18, Nesbit met the bank clerk Hubert Bland, her elder by three years. There is a Lewisham Council plaque to her at 28 Elswick Road. When Nesbit was 17, the family moved back to Lewisham in south-east London. Īfter Mary's death, Edith and her mother settled for three years at Halstead Hall, Halstead, north-west Kent, a location that inspired The Railway Children, although the distinction has also been claimed by the Derbyshire town of New Mills. Mary was engaged in 1871 to the poet Philip Bourke Marston, but later that year she died of tuberculosis in Normandy. The ill health of Edith's sister Mary meant that the family travelled for some years, living variously in Brighton, Buckinghamshire, France ( Dieppe, Rouen, Paris, Tours, Poitiers, Angoulême, Bordeaux, Arcachon, Pau, Bagnères-de-Bigorre, and Dinan in Brittany), Spain and Germany. Her mother was Sarah Green (née Alderton). Nesbit was born in 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane, Kennington, Surrey (now classified as Inner London), the daughter of an agricultural chemist, John Collis Nesbit, who died in March 1862, before her fourth birthday.

She was also a political activist and co-founder of the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later affiliated to the Labour Party. She wrote or collaborated on more than 60 such books. Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland 15 August 1858 – ) was an English writer and poet, who published her books for children as E.

In the dark edith nesbit