Pussy and Doggy Tales

By Edith Nesbit

Stories for children. With 25 illustrations. According to Wikipedia: "Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) 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. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a precursor to the modern Labour Party.... Nesbit published approximately 40 books for children, both novels and collections of stories. Collaborating with others, she published almost as many more. According to her biographer Julia Briggs, Nesbit was "the first modern writer for children": "(Nesbit) helped to reverse the great tradition of children's literature inaugurated by [Lewis] Carroll, [George] MacDonald and Kenneth Grahame, in turning away from their secondary worlds to the tough truths to be won from encounters with things-as-they-are, previously the province of adult novels." Briggs also credits Nesbit with having invented the children's adventure story. Among Nesbit's best-known books are The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1898) and The Wouldbegoods (1899), which both recount stories about the Bastables, a middle class family that has fallen on relatively hard times. Her children's writing also included numerous plays and collections of verse. She created an innovative body of work that combined realistic, contemporary children in real-world settings with magical objects and adventures and sometimes travel to fantastic worlds."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seltzer Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781455388264

Edith Nesbit

Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was an English writer of children’s literature. Born in Kennington, Nesbit was raised by her mother following the death of her father—a prominent chemist—when she was only four years old. Due to her sister Mary’s struggle with tuberculosis, the family travelled throughout England, France, Spain, and Germany for years. After Mary passed, Edith and her mother returned to England for good, eventually settling in London where, at eighteen, Edith met her future husband, a bank clerk named Hubert Bland. The two—who became prominent socialists and were founding members of the Fabian Society—had a famously difficult marriage, and both had numerous affairs. Nesbit began her career as a poet, eventually turning to children’s literature and publishing around forty novels, story collections, and picture books. A contemporary of such figures of Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame, Nesbit was notable as a writer who pioneered the children’s adventure story in fiction. Among her most popular works are The Railway Children (1906) and The Story of the Amulet (1906), the former of which was adapted into a 1970 film, and the latter of which served as a profound influence on C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. A friend and mentor to George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, Nesbit’s work has inspired and entertained generations of children and adults, including such authors as J.K. Rowling, Noël Coward, and P.L. Travers.

Book preview

PUSSY AND DOGGY TALES BY E. NESBIT

With Illustrations by L. Kemp-Welch

Published by Seltzer Books

established in 1974, now offering over 14,000  books

feedback welcome: [e-mail]

Children's books by E. Nesbit available from Seltzer Books:

The Enchanted Castle

Five Children and It

In Homespun

The Magic City

The Phoenix and the Carpet

Pussy and Doggy Tales

The Railway Children

The Story of the Amulet

The Story of the Treasure Seekers

New Treasure Seekers

The Wouldbegoods

Originally published by:

London J. M. Dent & Co. Aldine House 29 & 30 Bedford Street

1899 , W.C.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.

At the Ballantyne Press

I may have no nose, old man, but I smell rats.

Pussy Tales

Too Clever by Half

The White Persian

A Powerful Friend

A Silly Question

The Selfish Pussy

Meddlesome Pussy

Nine Lives

Doggy Tales

Tinker

Rats!

The Tables Turned

A Noble Dog

The Dyer's Dog

The Vain Setter

Pussy Tales

Too Clever by Half

TELL us a story, mother, said the youngest kitten but three.

You've heard all my stories, said the mother cat, sleepily turning over in the hay.

Then make a new one, said the youngest kitten, so pertly that Mrs. Buff boxed her ears at once—but she laughed too. Did you ever hear a cat laugh? People say that cats often have occasion to do it.

I do know one story, she said; but I'm not sure that it's true, though it was told me by a most respectable brindled gentleman, a great friend of my dear mother's. He said he was a second cousin twenty-nine times removed of Mrs. Tabby White, the lady the story is about.

Oh, do tell it, said all the kittens, sitting up very straight and looking at their mother with green anxious eyes.

Very well, she said kindly; only if you interrupt I shall leave off.

So there was silence in the barn, except for Mrs. Buff's voice and the soft sound of pleased purring which the kittens made as they listened to the enchanting tale.

"Mrs. Tabby White seems to have been as clever a cat as ever went rat-catching in a pair of soft-soled shoes. She always knew just where a mouse would peep out of the wainscot, and she had her soft-sharp paw on him before he had time to know that he was not alone in the room. She knew how to catch nice breakfasts for herself and her children, a trick I will teach you, my dears, when the spring comes; she used to lie quite quietly among the ivy on the wall, and then take the baby birds out of the nest when the grown-up birds had gone to the grub-shop. Mrs. Tabby White was very clever, as I said—so clever that presently she was not satisfied with being at the very top of the cat profession.

"'Cat-people have more sense than human people, of course,' she said to herself; 'but still there are some things one might learn from them. I must watch and see how they do things.'

"So next morning when the cook gave Mrs. Tabby White her breakfast, she noticed that cook poured the milk out of a jug into a saucer. That afternoon Tabby felt thirsty, but instead of putting her head into the jug and drinking in the usual way,—you know—she tilted up the jug to pour the milk out as she had seen the cook do. But cats' paws, though they are so strong to catch rats and mice and birds, are too weak to hold big brown jugs. The nasty deceitful jug fell off the dresser and broke itself. 'Just to spite me, I do believe,' said Mrs. Tabby. And the milk was all spilled.

"Now how on earth could that jug have been broken?' said cook, when she came in.

"'It must have been the cat,' said the kitchenmaid; and she was quite right, but nobody believed her.

"Then Mrs. Tabby White noticed that human people slept in big