Who Wrote “The Phoenix And The Carpet”?

This children's classic was written by E. Nesbitt in 1904 and made into a TV serial in the late 1970s. The mythical bird, the phoenix, is said to renew itself from the ashes of its own funeral pyre. This happens in a middle-class London home in the story, and the children of the household struggle to keep the magical bird hidden from their parents, and also to deal with the consequences of their adventures on the magic carpet. These include the sudden arrival of a cow in the parlour, after the phoenix has wished for milk. In typical Nesbitt style, the book is full of comic realism despite the use of magic, which is never used to provide easy solutions but more to create comic difficulties. The magic bird is foul-tempered, demanding and absurdly vain; nevertheless when he eventually "dies" to be reborn many years later, there is a real sense of loss.

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