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Please help identify this collection of short stories aimed at girls!

4 replies

Vagaries · 03/10/2020 00:59

I would have read it in the 80s. It was a collection of short stories/extracts aimed at girls, probably teenagers, I think with some line-drawing illustrations, hardback.

I only remember a few of the stories — one about a girl who’d moved unwillingly to a new town and was attending a new secondary modern, who had an imaginary pony called Suntan, I think called ‘Suntan and the Spy.’ One gruesome one about a massacre of British women and children in Cawnpore during the Indian mutiny. One rather disturbing story about a girl alone in an isolated mountain chalet hiding from a strange man who can see in all the windows and who turns out to have murdered her neighbour. One called ‘Comin’ Through the Rye’ which featured the poem as a refrain. There may have been an extract from Anna Karenina, the part where Vronsky rides Frou-Frou too hard in the race.

Does any of this ring the remotest bell with anyone?

Thank you!

OP posts:
Pelleas · 03/10/2020 13:13

I have a compilation including Suntan & the Spy, not Anna Karenina or Comin Through the Rye @Vagaries

It's called 'A Book of Girls' Stories' published by Golden Pleasure Books Ltd, 1964, illustrated by Alison Reid.

The stories are:
A Crown for Caroline
Pony Mad [that's Suntan & the Spy]
Come to the Fair
A Portrait ofJulietta
The Little White Ass
The Monster
With love from Jenny
Night of Terror
The Gingernuts
Lob
Sitting on the Fence
The door to nowhere
The Champions
Mary's New Friend
Fog
English Spoken Here
Job Hunting
White for Danger
Dancer's Luck
Forgotten Island
Funfair

Pelleas · 03/10/2020 13:34

'Pony Mad' is by Barbara Ker Wilson, and a search under Barbara Ker Wilson brings up quite a number of girls' story anthologies so that may help you find the one you're looking for.

Vagaries · 03/10/2020 18:56

Thanks so much, @Pelleas! I’m clearly confusing two anthologies — I definitely remember ‘English Spoken Here’ so think I’ve read the one whose stories you list as well. And thanks for the author name — it gives me something to go on.

OP posts:
Pelleas · 03/10/2020 19:53

The two fairground stories in that anthology really spooked me when I read it as a child (also in the 80s, it was a jumble sale bargain I think).

The poetry/extracts sound like what might be found in one of the old publishers' annuals. I've got a few with the same type of feature, but not the ones you mentioned. You could try Collins' annuals from the 60s.

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