Janet brought a copy of
The House of Arden up to the ITTDB Citadel at Christmas in
2014, and we all sat around reading it to each other. In the story, Edred Arden, a
nine-year-old poor orphan, unexpectedly discovers that he’s actually the next Lord Arden,
but still penniless unless he and his sister can use a trunk of magic clothes to have
adventures in past times and discover where the family treasure lies hidden—much like the
time-traveling mechanism in Nesbit’s earlier
The Story of Amulet. Also like
Amulet, this story was initially serialized in
The Strand before the book
publication. A companion book,
Harding’s Luck, appeared the following year.
In the
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, John Clute connects the two books to the Fabian
Society (named after the British socialists Fabian Society, which also included H.G. Wells)
because “Nesbit’s consistent Fabian socialism is central to the version of British
history’ presented in the books.
— Michael Main
Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,
The spell my little age allows;
Arden speaks
it without fear,
Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,
Make me brave and kind
and wise,
And show me where the treasure lies.
1 English variant