School Stories

[BookwormBeryl]

At the ripe old age of 72 I am doing research into British children's school stories published between 1900 and 1950. Yes, I know, a bit mad, and I am unlikely to come across many of you born that far back but I am wondering if any of you (older ones, polite cough) remember reading such stories, and if so which ones, did you enjoy them and why? And did your kids and now grandkids read them? Did you encourage them to or did you pass them down your old copies maybe? We're talking here typically Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series and similar, also of course the Chalet School, written mainly in the 50s and 60s. If you did enjoy them what for you was the magic ingredient? There is quite a nostalgic movement out there and some of the early original printed stories (say 1930s on) get amazing prices on Ebay, so there must be some interest. But I need to get a feel for what drew you to them, if you can remember that far back. Thanks.

Love Elsie J Oxenham and the Chalet School. Whenever you reread them, there’s lots of nuances I’ve missed previously. I do skip over the descriptions of plays / pantomimes in the later Chalet school books though.
The Jennings books are very much laugh out loud and there are oodles of them.

Another classic is To Serve them All My Days by RF Delderfield. Not a children’s book but the main character is a working class miner’s son who starts as a teacher at a minor public school and spends the rest of his life there.

The Jennings books are fantastic, even though it never seems to have occurred to any of the characters that they were stuck in a permanent time loop 🤣. I found three in my local charity shop recently & grabbed them.
The wordplay in them reminds me of Wodehouse or Heyer.

I'm 45 but, as a kid in the late 80s, it was Enid Blyton that got me reading. I started with the stories about the boy whose family joined the circus. I then moved on to the St Clare's series with the twins, and then on to Malory Towers. I enjoyed reading about the friendships, adventures and midnight feasts. I read a chalet school book but I didn't really enjoy it. The Chalet School seemed a rather strict, dull school in comparison to St Clare's and Malory Towers. The CBBC adaptation of Malory Towers finished recently. They did a great job and I watched it all with my DH and DCs and bought the books for them. I recently re-read a Famous Five book with DCs. I got the same feeling of excitement as I did when I first read it, aged 7. DCs loved it too, but they questioned how the adults allowed them to go off and do their own thing! I remember being off school with the flu and my mum bringing me a copy of a "Just William" story. Again, a 1940s publication. I read a lot of those too. At school, teachers read us a lot of Roald Dahl. I recently read "The Twits" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with my DCs. I laughed because " The Twits" would probably be banned now! Friends of ours gave us the Michael Morpugo box set. We read them together and DCs love these stories. For me though, no writer will ever beat Enid Blyton. By all accounts, she wasn't a pleasant woman, but it was her work that began my relationship with reading.

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am so grateful for all your comments - each one has told me something. Far from doubting my original decision to study school stories, this has confirmed that they are indeed social documents, portraying a time that has now lapsed, and are valuable in themselves just for that. As you say, the early 1900 authors had no idea about what lay ahead in terms of world events. This made me realise that I have come across very few school stories from the 1920s or late 40s that mentioned the wars in any detail. I am guessing that authors thought that it was the last thing their readers wanted to think about.
Re social class, I found this also so interesting. The largest number of readers of school stories were not middle or upper class pupils but working class and lower middle class. I managed to get a reply from an author who went to Winchester in the 60s - a really nice chap who gave up a bit of time for me - and he said they didnt have time to read school stories at all. It was all study study study, no leisure reading. And Frank Richards (Billy Bunter) appealed almost entirely to working class boys - young factory lads and the like - who loved swapping weeklies and laughing together about Bunter's antics. It made me wonder why the 'lower classes' (what a terrible term), accepted these middle class portrayals so willingly. No resentment at all. It seems that in those days people 'knew their place' (upstairs and downstairs) and accepted it fairly happily. Not the case these days I think?

BTW The Bookshelf - thank you for your reading suggestions. I have 'You're a Brick Angela' but was unaware of the other two publications. Looking forward to reading them now!

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 😁

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’?

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.

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