Edith Nesbit – the author of the famous children’s book The Railway Children – is brought to the stage in a new play making an appearance at The Miners’ Theatre, Ammanford in a new play by Derek Webb.

Called The Railway Children Lady, the part of Edith Nesbit is portrayed by Pembrokeshire-based actress Eloise Williams who has dozens of TV and stage appearances to her credit, including playing Dylan Thomas’ wife Caitlin, Natasha in Three Sisters and Gertrude in Hamlet.

Prolific novelist and poet, and co-founder of the Fabian Society with her husband Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit was to the world at large a figure of conventional if progressive tastes. The people in her life read like a who’s who of Victorian and Edwardian society. Eleanor Marx, Annie Besant, Emmeline Pankhurst, H. G. Wells, Sydney and Beatrice Webb, and Noel Coward were just a few of the notable personalities she numbered among her friends.

But, while forever remembered as the author of The Railway Children and a host of other children’s books, Edith Nesbit was testimony to the maxim that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. In the relative privacy of her home she was the Bohemian duchess, obsessive searcher of occult mysteries, chain-smoking mother to five children, two of whom were actually those of her philandering husband’s mistress, Alice Hoatson, who came to live with them. Edith herself was lover of George Bernard Shaw – and later an ever-younger string of adoring young men.

This mesmerising contrast between the public figure – author of lyrical poetry and children’s stories – and the private, often outlandish individual, makes the story of Edith Nesbit fascinating drama

And just as Edith Nesbit’s life was not in any way conventional, The Railway Children Lady is not a conventional one-woman show either. While Eloise plays Edith, other characters in her life are played by a number of actors, who appear using a variety of multimedia techniques, interacting with her on the pages of her books or ghost like, as if in her memories.

“She was an extraordinary woman,” says Webb, “and her life makes compulsive drama. The more I discovered about her, the more captivated I was by her story and I’m sure audiences will be too.” Webb’s previous play about Dusty Springfield ‘Call Me Dusty’ gained great critical acclaim when it was performed two years ago.

The Railway Children Lady is at The Miners Theatre, Ammanford on Thursday October 15 and also at Ffwrnes, Llanelli on Friday October 16 as part of a ten-venue tour of South and West Wales. Tickets are available from the Box Office or on line at theatrausirgar.co.uk.