Nesbit was the youngest of the Six children of John Collis Nesbit and Sarah Green (née Alderton) Nesbit. Her father, who single-handedly administered an agricultural college--the first of its kind, founded by his father--died when Nesbit was three years old. Although she could not have had many memories of her father, the return of the absent father becomes a poignant moment in many of her fantasies. Her mother--indulgent toward all her children, and especially toward the youngest, known as "Daisy"--took over her husband's work for a time. Failing finances and the onset of tuberculosis in her oldest child, Mary, occasioned a series of moves, both in England and on the Continent; Nesbit was ever after to be concerned with stability of place, and her nostalgia for the scenes of childhood play and relative calm was to remain intense throughout her life.
Nesbit published "My School-Days" in a series of articles for The Girl's Own Paper during 1896-1897; many of these memories--adventures with her much-loved elder brothers, Henry and Alfred--were to be transformed into the escapades of her fictional children. Her school experiences, which were much less positive, informed several short stories that focused on the child's desire for freedom from the petty tyrannies of schoolmates and schoolmasters.
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