The Nightbird is the ninth book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards

Monica Edwards

Monica Edwards was an English children's writer of the mid-twentieth century best known for her Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm series of children's novels.-Early life:...

, published in 1955 by Collins

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

. Like The White Riders

The White Riders

The White Riders is the fourth book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards, published in 1950 by Collins. It was the first book in the series to be illustrated by Geoffrey Whittam who subsequently illustrated all the following Romney Marsh titles .To Tamzin’s horror, a property...

, this is another ‘haunting’ story in which the children attempt to scare off unwelcome intruders. This time it is the French fishing fleet who are poaching in Dunsford Bay using illegal nets. The Thunderer, Jim’s old fishing smack, is transformed by the children and Jim’s fisherman friends, into a ghost ship with mysterious lighting and sound effects. Even Mr and Mrs Grey are pressed into service.

Although The Nightbird was written after Storm Ahead

Storm Ahead

Storm Ahead is the seventh book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards, published in 1953 by Collins. Lindsey Thornton, from Punchbowl Farm in Surrey, comes to stay at Westling with the Grey family. Almost immediately she is caught up in the worst gale the area has seen for many,...

it is set in the autumn before Storm Ahead

Storm Ahead

Storm Ahead is the seventh book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards, published in 1953 by Collins. Lindsey Thornton, from Punchbowl Farm in Surrey, comes to stay at Westling with the Grey family. Almost immediately she is caught up in the worst gale the area has seen for many,...

and just after No Entry

No Entry (novel)

No Entry is the eighth book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards, published in 1954 by Collins. When several farms in the area contract foot-and-mouth disease and have to slaughter their herds, the Merrows at Castle Farm are determined to isolate the farm from all visitors so that...

.

The story was first published in the Young Elizabethan Magazine as a serial between April and November 1955.

Blurb from First Edition

Another Romney Marsh story, and the most exciting one that Monica Edwards has ever told. When the fishermen of Westling are in despair because their fishing grounds are being poached by French boats, Tamzin, Rissa, Meryon and Roger—those four friends who live on the marshes and ride ponies and bathe and bicycle and have never a dull moment in their full lives—think out a wonderful plan. Why not sail a mystery ship, showing queer coloured lights and making eerie noises, out at night to haunt the French and perhaps scare them away? Will they be allowed to do it? Whose boat can they turn into a ghost? Will the plan succeed? Is haunting at sea too dangerous? Who will help? All these questions have to be answered. As well as problems, however, there are also triumphs and calamities, fights and rescues, riding and sailing, and much else besides before the end of this splendid, ghostly adventure.

Subsequent editions

• Collins 6/- edition - 1956
• Armada paperback - 1963 and October 1968 (abridged)
• Girls Gone By Publishers
  Girls Gone By Publishers
  Girls Gone By Publishers is a publishing company run by Clarissa Cridland and Ann Mackie-Hunter and is based in Bath, Somerset. They re-publish new editions of some of the most popular girls' fiction titles from the twentieth century.-Elinor Brent-Dyer:...
  
  reprint of original - 2006