The trio had no jobs and no money, but they did have wit and the intimacy with pop and non-pop culture natural to those raised in New York, the city that had, with its publishing houses, magazines, radio and theatres, defined itself as the 20th-century destination for aspirants.
This ultimate urban complex was home, even homey, for these kids, and compact enough for Holliday to wander out of the rain one night in 1938 into a Greenwich Village basement venue, the Vanguard. “Hopefully this feeds into our desire to play up some of the social issues and modern parallels in the book,” says Nelson. ‘The Railway Children’, Peacock Theatre, London WC2 (0870 737 0337) 23 March to 10 April. Betty Comden, a “Brooklyn goil” who studied drama at New York University, buddied up with Adolph Green, a wannabe actor out of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, as they waited in line for a Broadway chorus audition in the late 1930s. They ganged up with Judith Tuvim, of Queens, who changed her name to Judy Holliday.

But she was writing it as a contemporary novel for young readers, in the same way that children’s author Jacqueline Wilson does today.”The Railway Children deals with issues of the plight of refugees, prejudice, rural poverty and one-parent families. “She got in a lot of social and political issues that concerned her,” says Nelson. This production has been cast “colour-blind”, with non-white actors playing two of the children. “I cut out terms of endearment that modern audiences don’t connect to,” she says.This production, with singing and music, features an old-fashioned station set and a replica steam train. “E Nesbit is an interesting character because many people consider The Railway Children a piece of heritage literature in a chocolate-box past. “I tried not to get hung up on the 1970s film.” She first adapted The Railway Children for the stage in 2001 for New Perspectives Theatre Company. She re-adapted it for a larger cast in 2004 for the Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company, who performed it last summer.”It is strange when you read something to adapt it, because it is not for the story, but for the mechanics,” says Nelson She made changes, altering some of the Edwardian language.

In 1905, she published The Railway Children in the London Magazine and then in book form.It took Nelson three months to adapt the original book for the stage “What is important is to make it into a new play,” she says. To earn a living, Nesbit illustrated greeting cards and wrote verses inside them. She then started writing books, including The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), The Wouldbegoods (1901), Five Children and It (1902). Not only did she enter into an open marriage with her husband, Hubert Bland, whom she wed in 1880, but she was a passionate political activist who co-founded the Fabian Society in 1883, a socialist debating group. “Then she creates the fantasy ending in the book when he comes back.”Nesbit had a racy life. “When [Nesbit's] own father died suddenly, she spent a part of her childhood missing him and wishing he was there,” says Nelson.