School Stories

Crikey. I’d forgotten all about Daisy Pulls It Off.

Another example is the 1948 film The Guinea Pig. A boy (Richard Attenborough) is given a scholarship to a public school. He has to learn to fit in, and some of the boys and masters have to adjust their attitudes too. Whether he is working class depends on your definition; his parents have a tobacconist shop, so are small business owners, not wage earners. (Joan Hickson plays his mother.)

I think you do get a mixture of Working Class girls.

They vary between the:
As above. Working Class and shows by their behaviour/manners and they never learn and show they're not interested in improving. Jo in Malory Towers is probably the best example.

Working class, but often has a parent who worked for upper class/upper middle and has installed the values. They normally adjust quite well (eg Rosamund in Chalet School). They're also typically clever, often quite shy, although they might need some catching up because "The High" didn't do all the subjects. They're keen to do this and show how they can keep up with the others. They normally fade into oblivion in the next book as nothing remarkable.

And then we have the Daisy Pulls it Off trope. Working Class, but often has fallen from higher. They get the scholarship and go to a very snobby establishment. There the "bad girl" immediately hates them, and plays tricks on them to catch them out, and badmouths them ("You know I hear her mother had a shop") because they're a snob, however the rest of the year adore them immediately because they're clever, sporty and such a "good sport".
They score the winning goal against the team they never have managed to beat before, come top in all the subjects, get elected head of the form and save the day when they stop a robber making off with the headmistress' heirloom necklace. And are humble throughout all the priase.

Normally there's an instant where they save the life of the "bad girl" or possibly their younger sister. All the things the bad girl did promptly come out and they either declare themselves their undying slave and how wrong they are or they're immediately expelled and their crowd come to say how sorry they are and they were made to do it.

And then at the end, it's discovered that they were adopted and really come from a family far richer than anyone else's, or they come into a fortune, or their father was just suffering from memory loss after doing something heroic...
This proving the total snobbery of the author who clearly doesn't believe that a "working class" girl could actually do all these things.

That's dd's favourite book. I had to get a second copy as hers fell apart.

Gwendoline Courtney's A Coronet for Cathy has a working class girl at school with Cathy. Cathy goes to their home for tea and various elements of class are discussed in the book. It is a lovely comfort read.

But isn’t it because school stories are a MC and UMC affair, bar the very occasional WC ‘problem girl’, like Joan Baker in the CS, or Jo the ‘road hog’’s daughter in Malory Towers? You have the ‘romantic’ tale of Biddy the Irish servant’s child in the CS, where it is taken for granted that, though ‘adopted’ by the school, she isn’t educated at it, but sent to the village school for peasants until she proves clever? Jo is expelled from MT, and Joan Baker is never allowed to assimilate at all, and there are some unpleasant remarks about ‘heredity’?

Ah! Yes, that's it. I remember dd2 was unimpressed with them.
In that case I've also read a couple of AN Oxenham and found them totally unmemorable. 😁

I've only read a couple of Angela Brazil and found them a little too dated even for me. Dd2 I think they were the ones where she found the too much Morris dancing boring.

The Morris dancing was in EJ Oxenham, not Angela Brazil.

I think Angela Brazil was a less good writer than the others, and her language is partly what dates her. One can see EBD's point about slang! She was a generation older than EBD, and it shows - her earlier (pre 1914) books are still to some extent in the Victorian style of school story. EBD was far more modern in comparison.

The AB books I like best are those set in the Great War.

DS found Stalky and Co fascinating. He loved the off the wall-ness of them. He called people "Popularity Prout" if they annoyed him for a while. He thought some of the infernal trio's antics were hilarious.

Our Heffy is a nobleman!

My first ever solo holiday was a week in Venice back around the millennium & the hotel was next to a bookshop. I found Stalky & Co in their English section & sat by the Grand Canal in the evenings, reading it with an ice cream.

Angela Brazil, Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Antonia Forest for girls and Frank Richards (of Billy Bunter fame), P G Wodehouse and Horace Vachell for boys.

I read many of these, as did my dd2, who loved that era books. Her favourite were Gwendoline Courtney though. She loved the gentle nature of them. "No wrecks and nobody drowning" really.
When I read them, it was as a bit of a lonely girl imagining in a parallel universe being there with lots of friends.

We both loved the Chalet School. In fact dd2 was very disappointed to find we couldn't put her name down for it. She had a brown and flame uniform (including gym slip) she used to walk round in for a while.

All of me dd1 and dd2 read Malory Towers and St Clare's. Preferred Malory Towers and found the continuations rather cringy though.
I liked Trebizon series (the author was one of the people who wrote the continuations for EB, I think) but found them a little too edgy at times. They felt so grown up with their older boyfriends etc. Neither dd1 nor dd2 enjoyed them at all.

DS found Stalky and Co fascinating. He loved the off the wall-ness of them. He called people "Popularity Prout" if they annoyed him for a while. He thought some of the infernal trio's antics were hilarious.

I've only read a couple of Angela Brazil and found them a little too dated even for me. Dd2 I think they were the ones where she found the too much Morris dancing boring.
Loved the Dimsie books, as did dd2. She's a interesting character - totally captivating in a book, but I suspect would have been incredibly irritating in real life!

Antonia Forest, great books, very different to the others in that the children are not "for the honour of the school". I preferred her non-school ones, especially the historical pair, but I think that's partially because I prefer adventure type. Dd2 loved the school ones except "The Attic Term" that she found too sad.
Ds loved the historical ones though.

Frank Richards. I've got one Bessy Bunter and read some of the Billy Bunters. Tbh I just ended up feeling sorry for Bessie/Billy as they were so unaware of how they were seen by the others, which spoilt any enjoyment. I suspect we'd diagnose them with ASD nowadays.

I don't think I've read any school stories by the other two.

If you haven’t read it then ‘Goodbye, Mr Chips’ is fabulous and utterly heartbreaking on the subject of those losses.

I may have read it a long time ago, I'm not sure. I do remember the really excellent tv adaptation with Martin Clunes, in what was at the time for him a very different role.

If you haven’t read it then ‘Goodbye, Mr Chips’ is fabulous and utterly heartbreaking on the subject of those losses.

I didn’t read any books set in girls’ schools, but I used to love the Jennings books. I think the first was written in 1950 though, so they might be too late for you. I read them in the 1960s but didn’t own any of them, so must have taken them out of the library.

I found the characters very engaging, the scrapes Jennings and co got into very funny, and some of the dialogue was hilarious. However, I couldn’t interest my children in them when I tried!

I love school stories.
If you can find any Nancy Breary I strongly recommend them. They are very funny, if not particularly relevant to your work.

I had an extremely bullying and controlling older sister so I read constantly for escapism.

I loved the travel and skiing etc in the Chalet School. The rather heavy handed religious elements completely washed over me.

Claudine, yes! She featured in the recent adaptation. I'd forgotten about Carlotta.

Re the war. I would recommend getting hold of a Girls Gone By copy of Lorna Hill's Stolen Holiday, written during the war, published afterwards with the war hastily (and rather weirdly) edited out. It's an interesting piece of publishing history. The Girls Gone By edition shows the edits.

I loved Malory Towers, St Clare’s and the Naughtiest Girl in the School. Also Trebizon but those were more modern. I read a bunch of random ones at my grandma’s, which would have belonged to my mum and her sisters. There was a couple of Jane Shaw ones, but I’m not sure they were really school stories. I do remember one (not the name or the author!) where the new girl turns out to be the queen of somewhere. Main characters Lorna, Lizzy, probably Bill (there’s almost always a Bill) and a headmistress called Miss Dove. I liked it because it was a bit different to to the usual ones.

And not just Americans…

“Claudine was French. She hadn’t the same sense of honour as the English girls” or something like that…

And wild Spanish Carlotta. At the same time they were both attractive & vivid characters.

Oh I loved the Enid blyton books - starting with the faraway tree, then progressing to the famous 5 and secret seven then all the school books - Mallory towers, st Clare's, chalet school. The absence of parents is a key theme in children's books.

Also on the subject of class, previous posters have mentioned Jo Jones' new money dad. Also, Enid Blyton's depiction of well off Americans isn't particularly favourable. Look at Zerelda Brass in Malory Towers. Even the name is derogatory.

Yes, I remember Jo got expelled because she unwittingly stole money (she believed she was taking her own money back but took more than she'd started with). Jo's dad apologises and asks Miss Grayling not to expel Jo. He offers to double the amount she's stolen. The implication being, he's a new money pleb who thinks he can buy his way out of trouble, when Jo's behaviour is the issue.

There is a significant existing body of research on this area - other books worth looking at @BookwormBeryl as part of your own research would include:

• You're a Brick Angela (1985, Cadogan and Craig) , includes a chapter on girls' school stories
• The Marlows and their Maker (Anne Heazlewood)
• Reading Series Fiction (Victor Watson, includes a brilliant chapter on Antonia Forest).

The latter has much to say about the sense of continuity, worldbuilding and so forth in long series including Forest. Really worth reading.

Also if you haven't yet had a look at Girls Gone By publishers, do - they are a small independent publisher and have republished many old 'girls school story' favourites from the era you are researching. https://www.ggbp.co.uk/