The Railway Children Lady

Forever remembered as the author of ‘The Railway Children’ and a host of other children’s books, Edith Nesbit was testimony to the maxim that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Prolific novelist and poet, and co-founder of the Fabian Society with her husband Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit was to the world at large a figure of conventional if progressive tastes. The people in Edith’s life read like a who’s who of Victorian and Edwardian society. Eleanor Marx, Annie Besant, Emmeline Pankhurst, H. G. Wells, Sydney and Beatrice Webb, and Noel Coward were just a few of the notable personalities she numbered among her friends.

In the relative privacy of her home she was the Bohemian duchess, obsessive searcher of occult mysteries, chain-smoking mother to five children, two of whom were actually those of her philandering husband’s mistress, Alice Hoatson, who came to live with them. Edith herself was lover of George Bernard Shaw – and later an ever-younger string of adoring young men. This mesmerising contrast between the public figure – author of lyrical poetry and children’s stories – and the private, often outlandish individual, makes the story of Edith Nesbit fascinating drama.

Did she have any real regard for the rigid social conventions of the time? Were her young lovers simply a way of getting back at Hubert? Was the fantasy world she created in her children’s books, as much of an escape for her from the life she found herself in. And just as Edith Nesbit’s life was not in any way conventional, ‘The Railway Children Lady’ is not a conventional one-woman show either.

While one woman plays Edith, other characters in her life are played by a number of actors, who appear using a variety of multimedia techniques, interacting with her on the pages of her books or ghost like, as if in her memories.

Ignition’s previous production ‘Call Me Dusty’ achieved excellent media coverage with better than average houses for drama audiences and completely sold out in several venues. The enduring love of Edith Nesbit’s books should ensure a ready audience for ‘The Railway Children Lady’ – an audience eager to know more about the woman behind the fiction and the extraordinary life she led.