Connections
Apr. 21st, 2005 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustFrom Julia Briggs' biography of E. Nesbit, A Woman of Passion:
A footnote credits this information to the DNB entry on their father, John Collis Nesbit.
The families of children in E. Nesbit's books have much in common with the author and her brothers as children, so it's easy to picture Alfred as an eternal boy scientist, smudged and stained with his inks and dyes. Her plots, too, often hinge on sudden losses and recoveries of wealth, so the fraudulent alteration of cheques is a natural concern. The green carnation opens out this narrow reading to a wider world.
Neither of the two Nesbit brothers had done at all well: Alfred was married, and now worked as an analytical chemist at his own London laboratory at 38 Gracechurch Street. He was particularly interested in colouring and dyes: he patented a new ink for postmarks, a method of preventing cheques from being fraudulently altered (never used), and even invented the green carnation of the nineties;
A footnote credits this information to the DNB entry on their father, John Collis Nesbit.
The families of children in E. Nesbit's books have much in common with the author and her brothers as children, so it's easy to picture Alfred as an eternal boy scientist, smudged and stained with his inks and dyes. Her plots, too, often hinge on sudden losses and recoveries of wealth, so the fraudulent alteration of cheques is a natural concern. The green carnation opens out this narrow reading to a wider world.
