The Enchanted Castle
1907
The Enchanted Castle
1907
When three siblings discover a magical ring in a hidden room of a mysterious castle, they accidentally summon real enchantment into their world. Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen have always imagined themselves into grand adventures, but this time the magic fights back. A sleeping princess in the garden turns out to be Mabel, the housekeeper's niece, playing at royalty but genuinely trapped in a fairy tale she cannot escape. The ring grants wishes, but imperfectly, turning their summer into a dazzling, dangerous blur of transformed statues, invisible boys, and wishes gone deliciously wrong. E. Nesbit wrote this in 1907, when children's books were still mostly moral instruction in disguise. She refused to condescend. What she gave instead was a story that treats children as intelligent, greedy, quarreling, brave people who happen to also be young. The prose fizzes with wit. The adventures are genuinely frightening. And the question at the heart of the book - whether the children are dreaming the magic or the magic is dreaming them - never quite resolves. For readers who loved the boxcar children, who devoured Nesbit's other works, or who simply believe that the best children's books should feel like secrets shared between friends.
Editions
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“If you're lucky enough to be different, don't you ever changed" - Taylor Swift””
— E. Nesbit
“Oh, if I could choose,” said Mabel, “of course I’d marry a brigand, and live in his mountain fastness, and be kind to his captives and help them to escape and-“ “You’ll be a real treasure to your husband.” said Gerald.””
— E. Nesbit
“Don't bother about believing it, if you don't like it,' said the Princess. 'It doesn't so much matter what you believe as what I am.””
— E. Nesbit
“Aunt Emily says grown-ups never really like playing. They do it to please us.""They little know," Gerald answered, "how often we do it to please them.””
— E. Nesbit
“When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true--such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening. And, as I am always telling you, the most wonderful things happen to all sorts of people, only you never hear about them because the people think that no one will believe their stories, and so they don't tell them to anyone except me. And they tell me, because they know that I can believe anything.””
— E. Nesbit
“It is a moment, and it is eternity. It is the centre of the universe and it is the universe itself. The eternal light rests on and illuminates the eternal heart of things.””
— E. Nesbit
“Gerald's look assured her that he and the others would be as near angels as children could be without ceasing to be human.””
— E. Nesbit
“Everything was pleasant that day somehow. There are days like that, you know, when everything goes well from the very beginning; all the things you want are in their places, nobody misunderstands you, and all that you do turns out admirably.””
— E. Nesbit
“I've not got much money, but I've got heaps of ideas.””
— E. Nesbit
