The Wouldbegoods, Edith Nesbit
The Wouldbegoods, Edith Nesbit
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The Wouldbegoods

Author: Edith Nesbit

Narrator: Teresa Gallagher

Abridged: 3 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Naxos

Published: 02/01/2005

Synopsis

The Wouldbegoods, a sequel to The Treasure Seekers, reacquaints us with the six Bastable children: Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel and H. O. Again, the story is told by you-may-not-know-who, and the children find all sorts of ways in which to amuse themselves in the country during the summer holidays. ‘Children are like jam,’ says the Indian uncle, ‘all very well in the proper place, but you can’t stand them all over the shop – eh, what?’ Well, the children do their best, but they do get themselves into trouble – right from the beginning, when their latest brainwave is to create a jungle in the garden…

About Edith Nesbit

Edith Nesbit, the daughter of John Collis Nesbit, a schoolmaster, was born on August 19, 1858. Her father died when Edith was only six years old. Despite money problems, Edith's mother managed to educate her daughter in France.

At the age of nineteen, Edith met Hubert Bland, a young writer with radical political opinions. In 1879, Edith discovered she was pregnant; she married Hubert on April 22, 1880, and the baby was born two months later.

Edith and Hubert were both socialists, and on October 24, 1883, they decided to form a debating group with their Quaker friend Edward Pease, Havelock Ellis, and Frank Podmore. They decided to call themselves the Fabian Society and were later joined by other socialists. Edith and Hubert became joint editors of the society's journal, Today.

Edith was a regular lecturer and writer on socialism throughout the 1880s. However, she gave less time to these activities after she become a successful children's writer. Her most famous novels include The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Railway Children, and The Enchanted Castle. A collection of her political poetry, Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism, was published in 1908.

After the death of her husband in 1914, Edith married Thomas Tucker, an engineer. Edith continued to write children's books and had published forty-four novels before her death on May 4, 1924.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Chris on September 19, 2011

Edith Nesbit’s life was certainly unconventional by late Victorian and Edwardian standards, and it’s not surprising that her own childhood experiences and adult observations find themselves thinly fictionalised in her novels, particularly those written for children. Typical is her re-use of names of......more

Goodreads review by Shawn on February 09, 2023

I read a volume that included both The Story of the Treasure Seekers and The Wouldbegoods with an incredible introduction by Noel Streatfeild - if you can find this volume, do read it. I come to Nesbit quite late in life - she wasn't an author I enjoyed as a child. She's a very modern writer - she's......more

Goodreads review by Elisabeth on March 06, 2023

Frankly, not a patch on the original The Story of the Treasure Seekers. While the former was episodic, it did have a unifying element of all the children's escapades occurring while pursuing the goal of "restoring the family fortunes." In this sequel, there isn't any real motivation, so it's just ch......more

Goodreads review by Morgan's Endless on March 07, 2025

I did really enjoy this book, but it wasn't as good as the first one. The kids were still delightfully precious and everything, and their hijinks were entertaining, but it lacked some of the charm of book one. Also, I felt like Albert-next-door's uncle was a completely different character than who h......more

Goodreads review by eleanor on January 11, 2023

ENGL387 course reading this was so much worse than five children & it, i didn’t like any of the characters, the stories were really boring & i feel like it could have been so much shorter. at least in five children there was magic and a cool fairy. i know i’m not the audience for this book, but equa......more

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