The Magic World

Twelve stories make up this 1912 collection, and each one begins in an ordinary English childhood before something impossible walks in. A boy turns into a cat, a princess is caught by a fairy curse, a wardrobe opens onto somewhere it has no business opening onto, and an old talisman drags its owner off to Atlantis. Nesbit never writes down to her readers. Her magic has rules, her children argue and sulk and bargain, and half the jokes are aimed at the grown-ups reading over their shoulders. Writers from C. S. Lewis to Tolkien learned from this kind of storytelling, where wonder and household comedy share a room, and kindness to animals runs through the book as quietly as the enchantment does. The complete collection is available here as a free PDF and EPUB.