Classic school stories - which next?

[Dilbertian]

If I liked Chalet School, Malory Towers, Tom Brown's Schooldays and Stalkey & Co, what else will I like?

Depends what you mean by classic - I like the Trebizon series but they’re written/ set in the 1980s so might not be classic enough for you!

If you like Mallory Towers then you'll enjoy the St Clare's books (also Enid Blyton).

Have you read the Antonia Forest series? These are lovely stories, set in the 1950's, I think, about a family of girls at boarding school.

Have your watched the TV series of Malory Towers? I watched it during the first lockdown, it was proper comfort telly!

Angela Brazil and Dorita Fairlie Bruce were two other Golden Age authors of school stories. You can find some Angela Brazil on Project Gutenberg. I don't she's as good a writer as Brent-Dyer, and she didn't write a long series, although some of her characters appear in more than one book. However, she did start writing earlier, so she's worth reading for purposes of comparison. Some of her early books are set during the First World War, which is also interesting.

Dorita Fairlie Bruce wrote three shortish series, I think. She was a better writer than Brazil.

The other big name author in girls' fiction was E J Oxenham. Some of her books are partly set at school, but many of them are about girls in their mid teens or older who have left school and are considering their futures. Girls of the Hamlet Club and The Abbey Girls are very good, but many of the subsequent ones tend to be very much same plot, different characters - and the Marchwood twins should have been drowned at birth.

If you like classic boarding school books and don’t mind a bit of Agatha Christie-esque crime, you’d probably enjoy the Murder Most Unladylike series.

If you like classic boarding school books and don’t mind a bit of Agatha Christie-esque crime....

And Cat Among the Pigeons is an actual Agatha Christie set in a girls' boarding school!

To Serve Them All My Days is set in a boys' boarding school. It's not a children's book - it follows life and career of a schoolmaster from when he joins the school as a young man at the end of the First World War - but worth reading.

Anything published by Girls Gone By publishers.

Charlotte Sometimes

Drina Dances in...books

Back Home by Michelle Magorian

The Little Princess

Have you tried the Jennings series? They may not work reading them first as an adult, but they always make me smile.

David Blaize and David of Kings, by EF Benson (Project Gutenberg if you can't find them elsewhere)
Clare Mallory - NZ author.
Josephine Elder.
For Girls stories second the Girls Gone By website - unabridged versions, and they have not amended the language used when the books were originally written, as they are preserving the original text, unpleasant/offensive terms included.

Oh, and P G Wodehouse wrote a few school stories.

StClares - read
Antonia Forest - read (and re-read and will never be given away)
To Serve Them All My Days - as above
Jennings - good idea - must revisit (I read my brothers' copies when we were kids)
Angela Brazil - tried a couple, but they don't do it for me.

Thanks for the suggestions - plenty to try! Are there more like TBS, S&Co, TSTAMD and Jennings, that were not written specifically for girls?

I do have a copy of Tom Brown at Oxford. David Blaize is probably your closest to TBS.

Geoffrey Trease and Malcolm Saville wrote books in that era, not school stories but a similar type, and not written 'for girls'.

I was going to suggest Antonia Forest. Have you read the holiday Marlow books? And the Shakespeare ones?

If you would consider reading a play you might enjoy Daisy Pulls It Off.

What about the Flashman novels? Not school settings, of course, but similar period / social strata / language.

I see someone has already suggested the Abbey books by Elsie J Oxenham.
You can get a lot of them for free here
www.fadedpage.com/
There's also a really good blog about them here too WARNING: Contains plot spoilers!
allisonthompson.blog/

And I thoroughly agree about the awful Marchwoods. Particularly Joy

Mallory Towers ,St Claires ,Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor,Chalet School Tom Brown and Billy Bunter

Seconding the St Clare's series, which seems much less popular than Mallory Towers for some reason.

Also not fiction, but I have to put in a word for Terms & Conditions by Ysende Maxtone Graham, which is a history of girls' boarding schools and is very funny and nostalgic.

There was a school book set near a forest but I can’t think of it’s name as for comfort reading I love the Mallory towers and St Claire even the added ones later on.

You could try to get hold of some Talbot Baines Read - prolific writer of boys' school stories towards the end of the 19th century. They're pretty preachy by our standards IIRC but worth seeing if you like them. I can't find him on Gutenberg, sadly, though I've only had a quick look.

Billy Bunter, Jennings, William, Nigel . Molesworth