E. Nesbit's Psammead trilogy : a children's classic at 100

The year 2006 marks the hundredth anniversary of book publication of the final volume of the "Psammead Trilogy" - "Five Children and It" (1902), "The Phoenix and the Carpet" (1904), and "The Story of the Amulet" (1906)-a remarkable series of fantasy novels for children by an equally remarkable writer, Edith Nesbit.

The essays collected in this volume celebrate the completion of the "Psammead Trilogy", probably Nesbit's best-known and most beloved books.

Written by both established and new scholars in England, Canada, and the United States, these essays employ differing critical strategies and place Nesbit in various contexts to assess her achievement.

In producing books with memorable comic moments, character-testing adventures, plausible child characters with real feelings and real limitations, and interesting and challenging thematic material, Nesbit produced in the "Psammead Trilogy" books the children still read with enjoyment.

Such fantasies truly are classics of children's literature.