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=                 The_Story_of_the_Treasure_Seekers                  =
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                            Introduction
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'The Story of the Treasure Seekers' is a novel by E. Nesbit first
published in 1899.  It tells the story of Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice,
Noel, and Horace Octavius (H. O.) Bastable, and their attempts to
assist their widowed father and recover the fortunes of their family.
The novel's complete name is 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being
the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune'. The
original edition included illustrations by H. R. Millar. The Puffin
edition (1958) was illustrated by Cecil Leslie. Its sequels are 'The
Wouldbegoods' (1901) and 'The New Treasure Seekers' (1904).

The story is told from a child's point of view. The narrator is
Oswald, but on the first page he announces:

"It is one of us that tells this story - but I shall not tell you
which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is going
on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don't."

However, his occasional lapse into the first person, and the undue
praise he likes to heap on himself, make his identity obvious to the
attentive reader long before he reveals it himself.


                                Plot
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The Bastable family lives on the Lewisham Road in London in straitened
circumstances, the widowed father having been cheated by his business
partner. The children, Dora, the eldest, Oswald, the narrator, Dicky,
Alice and Noel (10-year old twins), and H. O., the youngest, decide to
restore the fortunes of their house by finding or earning treasure.
They try various methods that work in books, such as digging for it,
being bandits, marrying a princess, inventing a patent medicine,
rescuing a rich gentleman, but somehow nothing is successful. However,
during their imaginative adventures they make many friends.


                            Publication
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The Bastable stories from 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers' were
first published between 1894 and October 1899 in an assortment of
periodicals:
'Nister's Holiday Annual', the 'Illustrated London News' and its
supplement 'Father Christmas', 'The Pall Mall Magazine', and the
'Windsor Magazine'.

The order in which the chapters appeared was changed for the
one-volume publication in 1899. Some of them also underwent extensive
rewriting.


                   Influence on other literature
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'The Story of the Treasure Seekers' was the first novel for children
by E. Nesbit.  This and her later novels exerted considerable
influence on subsequent English children's literature, most notably
Arthur Ransome's books and C. S. Lewis' 'The Chronicles of Narnia'.
Lewis notes in the first chapter of 'The Magician's Nephew' that the
portion of the action of that book that takes place in this world
happens at the same time as that of the Treasure Seekers. The American
writer Edward Eager was also influenced by this and other Nesbit
books, most notably in his Half Magic series, where he mentions the
Bastable children and other Nesbit characters as heroes of his
characters.

Nesbit's influence on other British and American children's literature
rests largely on the following motifs: her protagonists are a set or
sets of siblings from a separated or incomplete family. The events of
the story take place while the children are isolated as a group, for
example, while on holiday.  Through magic or complex imaginative play,
the children face perils that they overcome through pluck. Another
notable feature is the depiction of the realistic quarrels and faults
of the children. J. K. Rowling, writer of  Harry Potter, ranked Nesbit
as one of her favourite authors, and 'The Story of the Treasure
Seekers' as her favourite of Nesbit's books.

British writer Michael Moorcock later used the character, or at least
the name, of Oswald Bastable for the hero and first-person narrator of
his trilogy 'A Nomad of the Time Streams', published from 1971 until
1981, an influence on the nascent genre of steampunk.


                           TV adaptations
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The book has been made into TV series three times, in 1953, 1961, and
1982. It was made into a television movie as 'The Treasure Seekers' in
1996.


File:Treasureseekers.jpg|Puffin Classics edition
File:P297 (Treasure Seekers).jpg|Illustration by Gordon Browne
File:P059 (Treasure Seekers).jpg|Illustration by Lewis Baumer


                           External links
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*
**
*
*
Also at Project Gutenberg:
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/794 'The Wouldbegoods'] - sequel
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25496 'New Treasure Seekers'] -
sequel
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28804 'Oswald Bastable and
Others'] - with 4 more Bastable stories


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