Psammead Series - E Nesbit - First Edition Children's Books - Five Children and It, The Phoenix and The Carpet, The Story of the Amulet

A complete unabridged collection of Edith Nesbit's Psammead series: Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet.

Written by E. Nesbit. Original illustrations by H. R. Millar. First published in Great Britain in 1979. Octopus Books Limited, London. (First edition thus.)

In Edith Nesbit's classic trilogy, the Psammead series, the Five Children - Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and baby brother, Lamb - embark on great adventures with help from "It", a sand-fairy known as a Psammead, a magical creature that grants their wishes.

Five Children and It (1902)
The children discover a strange, very ugly creature while playing in a sandpit. What is "It"?! An ancient sand-fairy, thousands of years old and the last of its kind. The Psammead, as it's properly known, existed to grant people's wishes for food, which had to be eaten by sunset before it fossilized. But modern, early-19th C children have much grander wishes! Their grandiose wishes lead to a series of bad outcomes and one desperate pickle which the Psammead gets them out of on the promise that they'll never wish for anything again. He grants an exception to Anthea, the second-oldest, with whom he's become friends, who wishes for him to come back one day. Wish granted...

The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904)
The children can't wait for Guy Fawkes Day and begin the celebration early, setting off a stash of fireworks in their nursery which sets the carpet on fire. Their parents replace it with a second-hand carpet that conceals a mysterious, glowing egg. It too is set ablaze when knocked into the fireplace but it hatches into a Phoenix. They also learn that the carpet is a magic carpet with the power to transport them anywhere in the present and grant them three wishes a day. Which they abuse, of course. The only time the Psammead is mentioned is when the Phoenix goes to "It" to wish for the children to be rescued from their latest wish. In the end, it's time for the Phoenix to be reborn and he rides away on the carpet to a place where he won't be born for another 2,000 years.

The Story of the Amulet (1906)
As the story begins, the children are on their own; their journalist father is off reporting on the war in Manchuria, their mother is in Spain with their baby brother recuperating from an illness. They're sent to live with an old nurse who's established a boarding house in London. They befriend one of the more interesting boarders, an Egyptologist they call Jimmy, whose field trips to shops and stalls in the neighborhood of the British Museum leads them to saving an old friend. In one of the shops they're shocked to find the Psammead, caged like an animal, unable to grant his own wish to be set free. So, they buy his freedom. As he no longer grants their wishes, he guides them to anothery shop where they purchase an ancient Egyptian amulet with the hope of granting their fondest wish, which is the safe return of their parents. In fact, it's only one half of the amulet, and it takes them time-traveling to the past and the future in search of the other half. The Story of The Amulet inspired C.S. Lewis to borrow a few of Nesbit's ideas or conventions for the Chronicles of Narnia.

Edith Nesbit was an interesting person with a full and colorful life. As a writer of children's stories, she is remembered for writing about them rather than for them. In more than a hundred years, the Story of the Amulet has never been out of print.

As Gore Vidal wrote more than fifty years ago in the New York Review of Books, "...she was able to create a world of magic and inverted logic that was entirely her own."

Nybooks.com/articles/1964/12/03/the-writing-of-e-nesbit/

Condition*: Near Fine/Very Good. The lower text block is lightly stamped with previous owner's initials, WHS. (This UK edition is not ex-library.) The dust jacket has edgewear along the top and bottom edges and a closed tear to the back flap.

* Based on guidelines of the Independent Online Booksellers' Association.

Etsy.com/shop/TheCharmedBookshop
Visit TheCharmedBookshop.com for more first edition children's books.