E. Nesbit · 1908 · exile
Nesbit's 1908 time-travel novel, and an influence on Tolkien's unfinished Lost Road. Two children inherit a ruined Sussex castle and no money, summon a magical white mole, and go back through English history looking for the family treasure - Napoleon's invasion scare, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Tower of London.
- 1Arden Castle
A ruined castle on the Sussex coast that Edred inherits with the title of Lord Arden and no money to keep it up - and where he and Elfrida find a spell that summons the Mouldiwarp, a white mole and the family's heraldic emblem.
- 2Dymchurch
1807, and Napoleon is massing at Boulogne. Nesbit calls it Lymchurch but it is the Romney Marsh coast - militia drilling, smugglers running goods past the excise men at night, and two children out on the marsh in the dark.
- 3The Tower of London
1605, and the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot - the children imprisoned with their own ancestor on a charge of treason, which is a good deal grimmer than most Edwardian children's fiction went.
- 4Boulogne
The other side of the invasion, and the Grande Armee camped on the French coast waiting for a fleet that never came - history seen from the enemy's beach, which Nesbit does without softening it for the nursery.
- 5Arden Castle
They find a treasure, though not the one they were looking for - and the book hands straight over to Harding's Luck, where a lame boy called Dickie Harding tells the same events from the other side.