NESBIT, Edith — New Teasure Seekers

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1904. The Last Bastable Adventure NESBIT, Edith. New Treasure Seekers. Illustrated by Gordon Browne and Lewis Baumer. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1904. First edition. Octavo (7 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches: 192 x 121 mm.). 328 pp. Frontispiece and thirty-two full-page illustrations included in the text. Publisher's red cloth, front cover and spine pictorially decorated and lettered in gilt, white endpapers, top edge gilt. Small tears to spine extremities, still an excellent copy. New Treasure Seekers (1904) is the third and final installment in Edith Nesbit's beloved Bastable series. Once again narrated by the irrepressible Oswald Bastable, the stories follow the six siblings - still intent on restoring the family fortunes - through a fresh set of schemes, scrapes, and comic misadventures. Their adventures take them beyond the familiar setting of their home, including holidays and encounters with new characters, but always return to the central theme of childhood ingenuity colliding with adult reality. Like the earlier books (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, 1899, and The Wouldbegoods, 1901), this final volume combines humor, warmth, and a sharp eye for the ways children see the world. It cements Nesbit's reputation as a pioneer of modern children's literature and provides a fitting close to the Bastable saga that so strongly influenced later writers such as C. S. Lewis and Arthur Ransome. .