Polistopolis and Torquilstone: Nesbit, Eager, and the Question of Imitation

In a 1958 essay in the Horn Book, "Daily Magic," Edward Eager acknowledges his debt to E. Nesbit, explaining that his own books for children "could not have existed if it were not for her influence." In fact, he feels obligated to mention her in them so he can lead his readers back to "the master of us all" (349) and justified in imitating her work because "second-rate E. Nesbit is better than no E. Nesbit at all" (352). Anyone who has read Eager's books will know that he is not exaggerating—they are filled with allusions to Nesbit's fiction. For example, Eager's characters often praise Nesbit's books, as when Abbie of Seven Day Magic (1962) complains that she has read everything Nesbit wrote and "nobody seems to do books like that any more" (13). In Knight's Castle (1956), Ann and Roger's father is always wanting to read Nesbit's books to them. Later, Ann pronounces The Magic City (1910), "one of the crowned masterpieces of literature which have advanced civilization" (53). In Eager's Half Magic (1954), the children believe Nesbit's works are "the most wonderful books in the world" (7) and their magical adventures begin only after they have finished reading Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle (1907).

So effusive is Eager's praise of Nesbit and so frequent are his references to her books that critics such as Zena Sutherland, Ann Flowers, and Eleanor Cameron have dismissed his fiction as formulaic, agreeing that it is indeed "second-rate E. Nesbit."¹ In particular, Cameron complains that Eager's The Time Garden (1958) is a mechanical imitation of Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet (1906). She explains that it is "as magical and subtle as the Automat, where you put in your dime and get a cup of coffee or, if you'd rather, a glass of tomato juice. Only instead of a dime, substitute the Natterjack who, on several occasions, is used by the children almost as unfeelingly as one uses a dime" (92-93).²

A quick glance at Eager's books seems to support the notion that he is mechanically copying Nesbit, that his imitations are a "dumbing down" of her work. But Half Magic and its sequel, Magic by the Lake (1957), borrow liberally from Nesbit's "Five Children" series. Like Five Children and It (1902), Eager's books involve the problems that result from the magical granting of children's capricious wishes. While this is a common plot device in children's fantasy, Eager is clearly imitating Nesbit. For example, in Five Children and It, a wish transforms the infant Lamb into a snobbish grown-up who has no time for his siblings. A similar wish has the same effect on Katherine and Jane in Magic by the Lake. Both Eager and Nesbit's fictional children wish themselves into medieval settings and onto desert islands and travel through time, often finding themselves in danger as a result. They also ask for rules to help them control the magic, so that grown-ups won't notice the magic's effects. At the same time, the cantankerous magical turtle of Magic by the Lake is clearly the Psammead of Five Children and It in disguise. Both creatures have lived for centuries, are reluctant to help the children, and are far from polite.

Eager's debt to Nesbit is also evident in both of his other series. In Eager's Magic or Not? (1959) and its sequel The Well-Wishers (1960), the protagonists compare their adventures to those described in Nesbit's The Wonderful Garden (1911) with good reason. In each of these works, the characters pretend they have discovered a source of magic, such as a wishing well or a garden. In the end, however, they are themselves the source of the "magic" they find. Perhaps Eager's most conscious imitation of Nesbit is Knight's Castle, in which characters travel to a toy city composed of books and household objects, much like the one in The Magic City. As...