In Search of a Fortune

In the opening to The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis writes: 

This is a story about something that happened long ago...In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road.

When I first read this as a child, I had heard of Sherlock Holmes, but had no idea who the Bastables were.  Lewis did not bother explaining--perhaps he thought it was obvious.  It was not until adulthood that I realized the Bastables are the protagonists of The Treasure Seekers, written by E. Nesbit in 1899, her first book for children.

The book's rather long subtitle is "Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune," and tells the story of six siblings in late Victorian London.  Having recently lost their mother, and their father being overwhelmed with grief and bankruptcy, the children are largely left to their own devices.  Each child has their own idea for how to turn the tide of the family's fortunes, and they implement each plan in turn, mostly to hilarious ill-effect.  The story is ostensibly told in the third person, but it takes about two pages to realize that the "author" of the book is Oswald, the oldest son.  Much of the humor in the story comes from the dramatic irony in spotting the holes in in Oswald's self-serving narrative, and from seeing the failures of the children's plans from a mile away.  

The book is noteworthy for many reasons, not least of which because E. Nesbit almost single-handedly created the genre of children's literature in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century.  When The Treasure Seekers came out in 1899, children were given fairly tales (Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book was published in 1889), or fantasies originally written for adults, such as Gulliver's Travels or Arabian Nights.  Stories about real children in contemporary settings were almost nonexistent.  (Though many of Nesbit's subsequent stories are magical fantasies, the Bastables are firmly grounded in the real world.)  

A mother of four herself, Nesbit is also adept at the characterizations of the children, particularly Oswald, and at managing the richness of the varied sibling relationships in a large family.  Though the story primarily plays out as a comedy, the suffering the children have endured, and their father even more so, adds the depth of pathos to the tale.  Moreover, it concludes in a beautiful eucatastrophe, where an act of gratuitous generosity by the children unexpectedly results in the reversal of fortune they had all hoped for.  

For fans of this book, there are also two sequels, The Wouldbegoods, and The New Treasure Seekers, which are not quite as good, but lots of fun if you just can't get enough of this family.

Ages: 9-12

Rating: A+