The Children's Book
The Children's Book is a 2009 novel by British writer A. S. Byatt. It follows the adventures of several inter-related families, adults and children, from 1895 through World War I. Loosely based upon the life of children's writer E. Nesbit there are secrets slowly revealed that show that the families are much more creatively formed than first guessed. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. The Wellwood family (Olive, Humphry, Olive's sister Violet, and many children) are Fabians, living in a world of artists, writers, and craftsmen, all moving into  new ways to express art, and living an artful life, before the horrors and loss of the Great War. While the central character of Olive is a writer of children's literature, supporting her large family with her writing, the title of the book refers to the children in the book: Tom, Julian, Philip, Elsie, Dorothy, Hedda, Griselda, Florence, Charles/Karl, Phyllis, and others, following each as they approach adulthood and the terrors of war. In an interview with "The Guardian" Byatt says:I started with the idea that writing children's books isn't good for the writers' own  children. There are some dreadful stories. Christopher Robin at least lived. Kenneth Grahame's son put himself across a railway line and waited for the train. Then there's J. M. Barrie. One of the boys that Barrie adopted almost certainly drowned himself. This struck me as something that needed investigating. And the second thing was, I was interested in the structure of E. Nesbit's family—how they all seemed to be Fabians and fairy-story writers. The book has so many fictional and historical characters that Byatt had to create a spreadsheet in Excel to keep track of  them all. Fictional characters in their families. The Kent Wellwoods: The London Wellwoods: At the Victoria and Albert Museum: At Cambridge University: In London: At Purchase House in Dungeness: Neighbours in Kent: "Their guests were socialist, anarchists, Quakers, Fabians, artists, editors, freethinkers, and writers who lived, either all time, or at weekends and on holidays in converted cottages and old farmhouses, Arts and Crafts homes and workingmen's terraces, in the villages, woods and meadows around the Kentish Weald and the North and South Downs." The Germans: The Tutors: Awards and nominations. 2009 Man Booker Prize nomination. 2010 James Tait  Black Memorial Prize.