Just re-read Ballet Shoes as an adult

[heron98]

Someone answer me this - if they are so poor they can't even afford new clothes, why don't they get rid of the flipping cook and the maid? Why doesn't Garnie get a job instead of staying up all night stressing about money?

Just read Sally's family and loved it :) Off to Google a Coronet for Cathie.

Prisoner of Zenda - I love it and have read it over and over again, but find it very hard to read Rupert of Hentzau because of floods of tears at the unhappy ending.
I downloaded another of Anthony Hope's books, The Indiscretion of the Duchess , but not a patch on P of Z, very dull.

I'm going to have to start a wish list based on this thread.

Gosh, I haven't thought of Ruby Ferguson's Jill books in years! Her widowed mother supported them (and in fact bought her ponies?) by writing sickly sweet Pollyanna-ish stories and Jill was always being scornful and terribly, terribly practical and jolly and commonsensical. My best friend and I had an ongoing fight about whether Jill's pony's name was pronounced Rap-EED or Rap-EYED.

I gather Black Boy has been renamed Danny Boy in more recent editions.

The one I liked was the one where Jill for some reason pretends to be a nasty girl called Amanda and rides Amanda's 'perfect pony' Plum in a team competition, and even though she's pretending to be awful, her inherent niceness shows through.

Coronet For Cathy is lovely.

My favourite pony books have to be Monica Edwards. White Riders is wonderful. I wish it was filmed. The whole set are great. Ds loves them.
However my pocket hates them as that was what got me into book collecting.

I was never into pony books (though enjoyed the Lorna Hill stories where they played a part) but loved Ruby Ferguson's A Paintbox for Pauline

I have just looked for A Coronet for Cathie on Amazon, but have been slightly put off by the price £999.11 ! Pkus £2.80 postage, which you would think they would forgo.
Lucky people who already own a copy - look after it!

Was it Follyfoot by Monica Dickens that features some pretty harrowing stuff - a horse essentially being joyridden and seriously injured over a high barbed wire fence by hooligans, and a scene that completely destroyed me when I first read it - a girl called (possibly?) Callie who is bullied at school and is given a parcel by the bullies which turns out to be a horse's severed hoof?

I think it was my first contact with horsy books that weren't either melodramatic and atavistic and involved wild stallions and ranches (My Friend Flicka) or jolly and commonsensical about gymkhanas (Pullein Thomsons, Ruby Ferguson etc).

Though I re-read the My Friend Flicka books recently, and had forgotten how dark some of the storylines are - less the inevitable animal deaths than how problematic Nell and Rob's marriage is some of the time, and how brutal Rob is to Ken when he's a dreamy ten year old.

ooh I loved Monica Dickens...
Follyfoot was set at the home of rest for horses that used to be at the top of my road until it was demolished and an estate built there.

MD had it exactly right about that area. (South Herts).

She also wrote a wonderful series of books called 'Worlds End' - does anyone else remember them?

Coronet for Cathie is £35 used on Amazon, so not sure where TrickyD was looking...

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/1904417140/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1478898385&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Coronet+for+Cathie

My friend Flicka v dark, the marriage , nell wanting and not having a a little girl, Ken brilliant, maybe ASD in today's terms.

Marianne, condolences on LC's death. One if my all time faves. Been to a concert or so. Loved his mordant humour. Songs of is my must have non classical album on any desert island or anywhere else. Interesting obits.

I'm going to have to read through this thread and make a (loooong) list of books I need to read again :)

Angelil, I was looking at the 'new, perfect' price here and was so stunned I missed the bargain 'used' £35.

Please OP. Can we ask for this to go in classics or children's do it doesn't get lost?

Ahh I remember reading Green Dolphin Country at my Granny's house as a teenager - it was a lovely old hardback - but I can't remember any of the story . Is it a bit like Gone with the Wind (which I also loved at that age)?
Other classics from Granny's house : Daddy Long Legs - Judy the orphan gets sent to college by a mysterious millionaire- have we mentioned it yet? Definitely up there with I Capture as a coming of age novel. And Girl from the Limberlost which is my DM's favourite.. about Moths!

I'm not suggesting Dodie Smith was consciously doing this

I think she was. I think we are being invited to see that the loveliest man in the book is automatically rejected (or not even considered) because he's not rich, and then she has some regrets when he is rich, and she perceives him as "staggeringly handsome", and they have a beating-about-the-bush sort of conversation about whether they should give it a go, but by then she's committed herself (unsuccessfully) to someone else. She misses him in lots of little ways, like when she mentions that he would have lit the lamps in the evening. I think the subtext is that she was in love with him at some level, but couldn't see it, because it would have been unthinkable to fall in love with a servant.

Anyway, if they'd all just ridden it out for another 3 years they would have been OK, because Thomas, who seems remarkably sensible and a lot more aware of what's going on in the outside world than anyone else, would have got himself a good job by hook or by crook and money would have started coming in.

Glad someone else has finally mentioned the World's End books - I thought of them as soon as The Children Who Lived In A Barn came up - but how old were the older children exactly? When I was a kid I never really thought about it but they didn't seem grown up - was it even legal for them to be left in charge?

HubbleBubbles Green Dolphin Country isn't in the least like Gone with the Wind, apart from being a saga. It starts off in Guernsey with two little girls, sisters, very unalike, who make friends with a little boy. He emigrates to New Zealand as a young man and writes to propose marriage to one of the sisters. Does this ring any bells?

It was based on her great grandfather/ great great uncle who did exactly that.

I posted about Daddy Long legs, I also I like its sequel Dead Enemy.

I have other books by Jean Webster, author of Daddy Long Legs, as well as Dear Enemy. One is Much Ado about Peter, another Jerry Junior, neither of which I find particularly interesting. However I love Just Patty.

This is, I suppose, a school story, but the school is strikingly different from any English school of the period (very early 1900s). There is much emphasis on the girls becoming independent thinkers. Sociology figures largely in the curriculum. It is also very funny. Patty and Priscilla (published in the US as 'When Patty went to College') is set in a similar institution to that of Daddy Long Legs. Again it always strikes me as describing educational opportunities for women well ahead of any available at the time in the UK. The women seem to have far more freedom without bring bound by so many petty social conventions. Some of the characters in Daddy L L make appearances or are referred to.

Mine are very old copies, and probably hard to get hold of but I certainly recommend these two books to anyone who likes Daddy and Dear Enemy.

I like Dear Enemy much better than Daddy-Long-Legs; the heroine is a grown-up with a job and so the relationship between her and the male character is much more equal, without the massive creepiness of Daddy-Long-Legs, in which the heroine is manipulated within an inch of her life. It's much funnier too.

I enjoyed Patty and Priscilla in my younger days, having inherited a copy from my great-aunt; wonder where it is now?

Agree that Jean Webster's books, and also other American/Canadian books of the period, give college-age women much more freedom. I'm always struck in Anne of the Island (my favourite of the Green Gables books) that Anne goes away to university, house shares with her friends, and has a dull boyfriend who she ditches when she realises she doesn't love him. I don't think there are any British girls' books of the period which give their heroines so much freedom.

I haven't read Dear Enemy recently, must do so, but I do recall some rather disturbing views on eugenics. Can't remember the details but to do with the mad wife of the hero.

I have just discovered that seven of J Webster's books, includng all mentioned on here, are available in one volume on Kindle for 99p - what a bargain! I might have to buy it to take on holiday and to help preserve my ancient copies from wear and tear.

I can't remember the details, Tricky, but I think there are concerns that the hero's daughter has inherited her mother's mental instability. It's a bit icky to read today but very much reflects understanding (or lack of understanding!) of these issues at the time.

Yes, Irene, that rings a bell. Must dig it out and read.

They're free on Gutenberg...

Her eugenics stuff, yes, fascinating. It was v up to date at the time, only recently published. You can google it under Kalikak.

Horrifically, the research on which it was based was deliberately flawed; he ignored a substantial proportion of the family. Less culpable, it's likely that quite a few of the individuals concerned were affected by fetal alcohol syndrome, not known about then.

So yes, disturbing. But even so there are genetic carry overs, and she was right to say that some institutions and individuals are not compatible.

I agree about the freedoms. That's noted also in a previous generation by Trollope, I think, who points out that American girls have freedom but when they are married, settle down; the reverse is true of the English ( upper classes, and by implication he includes sex after heir and spare).