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Five Children and It is a childrens novel by English author E. Nesbit. It was first published as a book in 1902, having been expanded from a series of stories published in the Strand Magazine in 1900 under the general title The Psammead, or the Gifts. It is the first volume of a trilogy that includes The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet. The book has never been out of print since its initial publication.

This happened a very little time after we left our humble home in Lewisham, and went to live at the Blackheath house of our Indian uncle, which was replete with every modern convenience, and had a big garden and a great many greenhouses. We had had a lot of jolly Christmas presents, and one of them was Dickys from father, and it was a printing-press. Not one of the eighteenpenny kind that never come off, but a real tip-topper, that you could have printed a whole newspaper out of if you could have been clever enough to make up all the stuff there is in newspapers. I dont know how people can do it. Its all about different things, but it is all just the same too. But the author is sorry to find he is not telling things from the beginning, as he has been taught. The printing-press really doesnt come into the story till quite a long way on. So it is no use your wondering what it was that we did print[Pg 2] with the printing-press. It was not a newspaper, anyway, and it wasnt my young brothers poetry, though he and the girls did do an awful lot of that. It was something much more far-reaching, as you will see if you wait.

Illustrators: Frances Brundage and M. Bowley

There were three of themJerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen. Of course, Jerrys name was Gerald, and not Jeremiah, whatever you may think; and Jimmys name was James; and Kathleen was never called by her name at all, but Cathy, or Catty, or Puss Cat, when her brothers were pleased with her, and Scratch Cat when they were not pleased. And they were at school in a little town in the West of Englandthe boys at one school, of course, and the girl at another, because the sensible habit of having boys and girls at the same school is not yet as common as I hope it will be some day. They used to see each other on Saturdays and Sundays at the house of a kind maiden lady; but it was one of those houses where it is impossible to play. You know the kind of house, dont you? There is a sort of a something about that kind of house that makes you hardly able even to talk to each other when you are left alone, and playing seems unnatural and affected. So they looked forward to the holidays, when they should all go home and be together all day long, in a house where playing was natural and conversation possible, and where the Hampshire forests and fields were full of interesting things to do and see.

The house was three miles from the station, but, before the dusty hired hack had rattled along for five minutes, the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and say, "Arent we nearly there?" And every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said, "Oh, is this it?" But it never was, till they reached the very top of the hill, just past the chalk-quarry and before you come to the gravel-pit. And then there was a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond, and mother said, "Here we are!""How white the house is," said Robert."And look at the roses," said Anthea."And the plums," said Jane."It is rather decent," Cyril admitted.The Baby said, "Wanty go walky;" and the hack stopped with a last rattle and jolt.

Alfred the GreatPrince ArthurHenry the ThirdThe First Prince of WalesEdward the Black PrinceHenry the Fifth and the Baby KingWHEN I was very, very little, I hated history more than all my other lessons put together, because I had to learn it out of a horrid little book, called somebodys "Outlines of English History"; and it seemed to be all the names of the kings and the dates of battles, and, believing it to be nothing else, I hated it accordingly.I hope you do not think anything so foolish, because, really, history is a story, a story of things that happened to real live people in our England years ago; and the things that are happening here and now, and that are put in the newspapers, will be history for little children one of these days.The people in those old times were the same kind of people who live now. Mothers loved their children then, and fathers worked for them, just as mothers and fathers do now, and children then were good or bad, as the case might be, just as little children are now. And the people you read about in history were real live people, who were good and bad, and glad and sorry, just as people are now-a-days.

THE JUNGLE THE WOULDBEGOODS BILLS TOMBSTONE THE TOWER OF MYSTERY THE WATER-WORKS THE CIRCUS BEING BEAVERS; OR, THE YOUNG EXPLORERS (ARCTIC OR OTHERWISE) THE HIGH-BORN BABE HUNTING THE FOX THE SALE OF ANTIQUITIES THE BENEVOLENT BAR THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS THE DRAGONS TEETH; OR, ARMY-SEED ALBERTS UNCLES GRANDMOTHER; OR, THE LONG-LOST

Sabrina FairThe CaptiveThe RescueGratitudeConsequencesThe Mermaids HomeThe Skies Are Falling The Water-WarThe Book PeopleThe Under FolkThe PeacemakerThe End

The Book of BeastsUncle James, or The Purple StrangerThe Deliverers of Their CountryThe Ice Dragon, or Do as You Are ToldThe Island of the Nine WhirlpoolsThe Dragon TamersThe Fiery Dragon, or The Heart of Stone and the Heart of GoldKind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the Cockatrice