The Story of the Treasure Seekers

"The Story of the Treasure Seekers" is a novel by E. Nesbit. First published in 1899, it tells the story of Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavious (H.O.) Bastable, and their attempts to assist their widowed father and recover the fortunes of their family; its sequels are the The Wouldbegoods (1899) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). The novel's complete name is "The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune". Illustrations are by Cecil Leslie.

British writer Michael Moorcock would later use the character, or his name, of Oswald Bastable for the hero and first-person narrator of Moorcock's trilogy "A Nomad of the Time Streams" which, published from 1971 until 1981, greatly influenced the nascent genre of steampunk.

Influence on other children's literature

"The Story of the Treasure Seekers" was the first novel by Nesbit; it and its successor novels exerted considerable influence on subsequent English children's literature--Arthur Ransome and C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia", most notably. (Lewis also notes in the first chapter of "The Magician's Nephew" that the portion of that book's action that takes place in this world happens at the same time as this book.) The protagonists are a set or sets of siblings from a separated or incomplete family who must (or prefer to) amuse themselves alone while on holiday. Through magic or complex imaginative play, the children face peril that they overcome through pluck. [Graham, Eleanor. "E. Nesbit and the Bastables." Introduction to "The Story of the Treasure Seekers". Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1971.] Notable is the depiction of the realistic quarrels and faults of the children.

Footnotes

External links

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* [http://librivox.org/the-story-of-the-treasure-seekers-by-e-nesbit/ Free audiobook] from [http://librivox.org LibriVox]