The Phoenix and the Carpet was published by George Newnes in 1904, with illustrations by H.R. Millar. The novel is the second in the Psammead trilogy, though the Psammead itself appears only briefly. The children’s new magical companions are a Phoenix — hatched from an egg wrapped in a carpet that their parents buy as a fireside rug — and the carpet itself, which is a flying carpet capable of transporting them anywhere they wish.
The Phoenix is a magnificent comic creation: immortal, golden, supremely self-regarding, and possessed of an absolute certainty of its own divinity that the children find alternately impressive and exasperating. It speaks in a register of antique grandeur (“In the presence of the doer of doable deeds!”) that contrasts brilliantly with the children’s modern English and their practical concerns about being late for tea or explaining their absence to the cook.
The carpet’s transportation magic provides the novel’s structure: each chapter sends the children to a different location (France, a tropical island, India, backstage at a theater) where complications arise that must be resolved before they can return home. The complications are characteristically Nesbit: logical consequences of magical actions that the children didn’t foresee, requiring quick thinking and moral choices rather than further magic to resolve.
The novel also contains one of Nesbit’s most subversive episodes: the children accidentally transport 199 Persian cats into their mother’s drawing room during a party, creating a scene of domestic chaos that perfectly captures her understanding of how children’s logic and adult expectations collide.
Collecting The Phoenix and the Carpet
First edition (George Newnes, London, 1904): Cloth binding, H.R. Millar illustrations.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $400–$1,000
- Very good: $150–$400
- Good: $60–$150