Harding's Luck

Harding's Luck is a children's fantasy novel by Edith Nesbit, first published in 1909. It is her companion to The House of Arden. Its hero is Dickie Harding, a poor orphan in New Cross whose lameness, neglected home, love of books, and carefully guarded family rattle define a life far removed from the Arden children.

Dickie's fortunes change through his friendship with the wandering Beale and through objects linked to the old Arden family. Sleep and magic carry him to the reign of James I, where he lives as Richard Arden and discovers another history in which he belongs.

The past offers health, affection, and a secure place, while the present binds Dickie to Beale and to children whose inheritance his own identity may alter. Treasure, genealogy, and time travel therefore lead to a moral choice about loyalty, not simply an escape from hardship.

Nesbit gives the fantasy unusual social weight. Poverty and disability shape how adults judge Dickie, but neither determines his courage or generosity. The novel asks what constitutes family and good fortune, making love and responsibility the real inheritance behind its magical plot.

"Dickie lived at New Cross. At least the address was New Cross, but really the house where he lived was one of a row of horrid little houses built on the slope where once green fields ran down the hill to the river, and the old houses of the Deptford merchants stood stately in their pleasant gardens and fruitful orchards. All those good fields and happy gardens are built over now."