She was born in 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane in Kennington, Surrey(now part of Greater London), the daughter of a schoolteacher, John CollisNesbit, who died in March 1862, before her fourth birthday. Her sister Mary'sill health meant that the family moved around constantly for some years, living variously in Brighton, Buckinghamshire, France (Dieppe, Rouen, Paris, Tours, Poitiers, Angouleme, Bordeaux, Arcachon, Pau, Bagneres deBigorre, and Dinan in Brittany), Spain and Germany, before settling for threeyears at Halstead Hall in Halstead in north-west Kent, a location which laterinspired The Railway Children. When Nesbit was 17, the family movedagain, this time back to London, living variously in South East London atEltham, Lewisham, Grove Park and Lee. A follower of William Morris, 19-year-old Nesbit met bank clerk Hubert Bland in 1877. Seven monthspregnant, she married Bland on 22 April 1880, though she did notimmediately live with him, as Bland initially continued to live with hismothe