# The Phoenix and the Carpet — Character guide

> Key figures in The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit.

- [Anthea](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/anthea.md): Anthea is the sister who feels every mishap as her own fault, from a badly darned hole to a forgotten brother, and who reaches for the poker to give her mother a believable reason for red eyes. She wants to be good and t
- [Cyril](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/cyril.md): Cyril is the practical one who votes for America, calculates what fourpence will buy, and tells his uncle exactly as much truth as an uncle can believe. He is brave in a pinch and useless with a needle, pricking his hand
- [Robert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/robert.md): Robert is the boy who suggests letting the Phoenix decide, who compares flying to tobogganing, and who falls through the central darn without losing his nerve. He is loyal, game, and a little reckless, the sort of brothe
- [Jane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/jane.md): Jane is the small sister who notices the carpet is the exact size of a tower top, who feels measles coming on when the world goes misty, and who cries noisily when the Lamb vanishes. She is sensible in her way, kind, and
- [The Phoenix](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/the_phoenix.md): The Phoenix is the children's guide and resident expert on Bosh, magic carpets, and the importance of keeping one wish in reserve for emergencies. It is vain, courteous, easily bored, and unexpectedly tender about Robert
- [The Lamb](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/the_lamb.md): The Lamb is the toddler the older children are supposed to keep safe, a happy little presence who has never been out of loving sight until the carpet carries him off alone. His vanishing forces Anthea to deceive her moth
- [Mother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/mother.md): Mother keeps the household running while Father writes, and her Sunday dinners and pretty sparkly shoes mark the safe, ordinary world the children keep vanishing from. She is kind but not always clever enough to know wha
- [Father](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/father.md): Father brings home Saturday flowers, works all week, and still gathers the children on the hearthrug for stories when he could be sleeping. His gentle joke about there being as good fish in the sea goes over the children
- [Mrs. Biddle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/mrs_biddle.md): Mrs. Biddle rules the kitchen with fury and a clenched fist, and her broken-basin rampage over the children's melted-lead fortune-telling is one of the book's great domestic eruptions. Her temper makes her a comic menace
- [The Reverend Septimus Blenkinsop](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/the_reverend_septimus_blenkinsop.md): The Reverend Septimus moves through the same shabby London streets as the children, a figure of respectable adult authority who nonetheless gets swept into their errands. His presence sharpens the contrast between the or
- [Miss Peasmarsh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/miss_peasmarsh.md): Miss Peasmarsh belongs to the ordinary, struggling London the children glimpse beyond their nursery, and she becomes a test of what the carpet is really for. Trying to help her pushes the children past pure adventure int
- [Burglar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters/burglar.md): A burglar who breaks into the house and is caught.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_phoenix_and_the_carpet_se/characters