The Story of the Treasure Seekers is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by E. Nesbit

E. Nesbit

Edith Nesbit was an English author and poet whose children's works were published under the name of E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television...

. First published in 1899, it tells the story of Dora, Oswald

Oswald Bastable

Oswald Bastable is a fictional character in:* The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, New Treasure Seekers and Oswald Bastable and Others, by E. Nesbit....

, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavius (H. O.) Bastable, and their attempts to assist their widowed father and recover the fortunes of their family; its sequels are the The Wouldbegoods (1899) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). 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

H. R. Millar

Harold Robert Millar was a prominent and prolific Scottish graphic artist and illustrator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is best known for his illustrations of children's books and fantasy literature...

. The Puffin

Puffin Books

Puffin Books is the children's imprint of British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s it has been the largest publisher of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world.-Early history:...

 edition (1958) was illustrated by Cecil Leslie

Cecil Mary Leslie

Cecil Mary Leslie was an engraver, portrait painter, sculptor and illustrator. She studied at the Royal Academy Schools, and exhibited from 1923 until 1939 at the Royal Academy; the Society of Women Artists; the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts; the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; the New English...

.

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 first person, and the undue praise he likes to heap on himself, makes his identity obvious to the attentive reader long before he reveals it himself.

Influence on other literature

The Story of the Treasure Seekers was the first novel by Nesbit; it and its successor novels exerted considerable influence on subsequent English children's literature

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

, most notably Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects...

's books and C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

' The Chronicles of Narnia

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages...

. (Lewis also notes in the first chapter of The Magician's Nephew

The Magician's Nephew

The Magician's Nephew is a fantasy novel for children written by C. S. Lewis. It was the sixth book published in his The Chronicles of Narnia series, but is the first in the chronology of the Narnia novels' fictional universe. Thus it is an early example of a prequel.The novel is initially set in...

that the portion of that book's action that takes place in this world happens at the same time as this book.). American writer Edward Eager was also greatly influenced by this and other Nesbit books, most notably in his Half Magic series, which actually mention the Bastable children (and other Nesbit titles and characters) as heroes of Eager's 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 who must (or prefer to) amuse themselves alone 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.

British writer Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock

Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....

 would later use the character, or his name, of Oswald Bastable

Oswald Bastable

Oswald Bastable is a fictional character in:* The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, New Treasure Seekers and Oswald Bastable and Others, by E. Nesbit....

 for the hero and first-person narrator of Moorcock's trilogy A Nomad of the Time Streams

A Nomad of the Time Streams

A Nomad of the Time Streams is a compilation volume of Michael Moorcock's influential early steampunk trilogy which Moorcock began in 1971 with The Warlord of the Air and was continued by its 1974 and 1981 sequels, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar. The trilogy follows the adventures of...

which, published from 1971 until 1981, greatly influenced the nascent genre of steampunk

Steampunk

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...

.

TV adaptations

The book has been made into TV series three times, in 1953, 1961, and 1982. It was made into a television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

 as The Treasure Seekers

The Treasure Seekers (1996 film)

The Treasure Seekers is a 1996 British television family film directed by Juliet May and starring Camilla Power, Felicity Jones and Kristopher Milnes. In Edwardian England, a family have only a few days to raise enough money to stop their home being repossessed. It is based on the novel The Story...

in 1996.

External links

• The Story of the Treasure Seekers from the Full Text Archive
• LibriVox* Free audiobook from LibriVox