If indeed the gentle, grey-robed nuns who long, long ago had stolen

silently along those very stairs could have come back to survey the
scene of their former activities, I fear on this particular occasion they
would have wrung their slim, transparent hands in horror over the
stalwart modern maidens who had succeeded them in possession of the
ancient, rambling house. No pale-faced novices these, with downcast
eyes and cheeks sunken with fasting; no timid glances, no soft ethereal
footfalls or gliding garments - the old order had changed indeed, and
yielded place to a rosy, racy, healthy, hearty, well-grown set of
twentieth-century schoolgirls, overflowing with vigorous young life and
abounding spirits, mentally and physically fit, and about as different
from their mediaeval forerunners as a hockey stick is from a spindle.

(Angela Brazil, The School by the Sea, Blackie & Son, 1914, pp10-11)

The genre of girls' school stories arose in parallel with the provision of
secondary education for British girls, from the late nineteenth century
onwards. At the beginning of the twentieth century, less than a quarter of
all British girls aged between twelve and eighteen attended any kind of
school, but by 1920 the number receiving a secondary education had risen
from 20,000 in 1897 to 185,000. Similarly, while the fundamental elements
of the genre can be discerned in stories published in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, it was only in the first quarter of the twentieth century
that the genre of girls' school stories became established and the most
popular form of reading for British girls.
his1

In the nineteenth century, while education was seen as a passport to success

in professional and public life for Victorian middle-class boys, who were
educated "for the world", middle-class girls were educated "for the drawing
room" and their education was social rather than intellectual . As a result, the
majority of upper- and upper-middle-class girls were educated at home, with
only a minority attending expensive, fashionable boarding schools with a
non-academic curriculum . Meanwhile the daughters of the professional and
the merchant classes were educated at home until they were about ten years
old, after which they attended a local day school for two or three years,
generally followed by a boarding school which provided a social rather than
an academic education. Lower-middle-class girls attended small, local day
schools for about four or five years from around the age of ten, and their
levels of achievement were particularly low.
his2

For the majority of upper- and middle-class girls, this pattern continued until
as late as the beginning of the First World War. But in 1850 Frances Mary
Buss established the North London Collegiate School, the first of the modern
fee-paying day schools or High Schools, offering a similar education to that
given to boys; in 1869 the Endowed Schools Act increased girls' access to
grammar schools, which had previously been almost exclusively male; in
1872 Emily Shirreff and her sister Maria Grey founded the Girls' Public Day
School Company, enabling schools to be owned by trusts or companies and
controlled by a board of governors rather than by private individuals; and in
1877 the first girls' public school, St Andrew's, opened in Scotland, followed
by Roedean in 1885 and Wycombe Abbey in 1896.
his3

By the beginning of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of middle-

class British girls were attending school, fuelled by the growing preference of
women to teach in schools rather than in private families. Girls studied a
curriculum similar to that which was provided in boys' schools, with the
emphasis on academic attainment and sport rather than domestic roles. (It
should be stressed, though, that girls' ultimate destination in life was still
taken to be that of wife and mother, now educated to be a "companion" to
her husband and better able to mother her children.) Many more schools for
middle-class girls opened in the first quarter of the twentieth century,
including St Felix in Southwold and Benenden ; these were inevitably single-
sex and owned privately or by the Girls' Public Day School trust, and many
were boarding schools, fuelled by the demands of an Empire which meant
that large numbers of middle-class British parents were based overseas.
his4

Working-class British girls, though, had to wait longer for equal access to
education. During the early Victorian period, the majority of working-class
girls attended dame schools, charity schools or state-aided voluntary or
industrial schools, leaving at about eleven years old when they could enter
employment. While at school they followed a restricted curriculum,
comprising reading, religious education and some writing, and there is
evidence to suggest that both their access to education and the curriculum
which they studied was markedly poorer than that of working-class boys.
The 1870 Education Act, which established the state-organised elementary
schools, formalised the differences between boys' education and girls' with a
sex-specific curriculum, with the aim of girls' education being seen as
preparing them for domestic life, both in their own homes and in the service
of others.
his5
Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the 1902 Education Act
introduced radical changes to the organisation and administration of the state-
organised schools which working-class pupils attended. School boards were
abolished, and local authorities were empowered to become education
authorities; to administer the elementary schools; and to found and run
secondary schools. However, the education which was provided was still
gender-specific and inferior to that which was given to upper- and middle-
class pupils. Also, while the secondary schools provided a more academic
curriculum, they charged fees. Since scholarship places, which were
introduced in 1907, were limited, access for working-class girls was severely
restricted. Similarly, the age at which pupils could legally leave school was
set at twelve years old in 1899, with fourteen made compulsory only in
1918, meaning that the length of working-class girls' educational careers was
considerably shorter than that of middle-class girls. It was only with the 1944
Education Act , which introduced free secondary education for all and
raised the school leaving age to fifteen, that the majority of working class
girls began to achieve greater equality of opportunity.
his6

The early schoolgirls' lives revolved around their school experiences,

reinforced by a society which treated middle-class girls as children until they
left school at seventeen or eighteen years old. In general, it was a world
without boys and adults. Sally Mitchell records that, during the last two
decades of the nineteenth century: "both working-class and middle-class girls
increasingly occupied a separate culture."

The new girl - no longer a child, not yet a (sexual) adult - occupied a
provisional free space. Girls' culture suggested new ways of being, new
modes of behaviour, and new attitudes that were not yet acceptable for
adult women (except in the case of the advance few).

While girls' own lives varied widely, fiction provided them with a common
imaginary world. Mitchell claims that: "whether they were at work, at home,
or at school, girls could be defined through their shared stories, feelings,
interest, self-image, language, and values." Many of those stories were set
in girls' schools, where girls' feelings, interests, language and values were
reflected along with the schoolgirl image, characterised by the gym tunic
which had become the uniform dress and which symbolised the separate
identity of the schoolgirl. This image signified a revolution in British girls'
lives. Mitchell describes:

the turn-of-the-century girl's dramatic liberation when she first dressed

in a costume distinctively her own, which marked her as neither child
nor woman, had pockets, made it possible to run and climb, and let her
add a boy-style shirt and tie.
his7

Along with their own costume, girls now had their own literature, which
focused, not on their lives as daughters and future wives and mothers, but on
their often heroic activities in an all-female world which could lead on to
university and a career, with their school being central both to the stories and
to the characters' lives. As Rosemary Auchmuty points out:

School stories were literary proof that (middle-class) girls' education

was at last being taken seriously and that (middle-class) girls should
have access to a masculine curriculum, including games, and a
masculine value-system, perceived in a patriarchal society as the best
available. This in itself was a source of pride for schoolgirls. A still
greater source of strength and pleasure was, no doubt, the fact of
studying, playing, and learning to live together in a community of girls
and women, free from the constant patronage, harrassment and
competition of the male sex.

Margaret Simey, who was born in 1906 and became a pupil at St Paul's girls'
public school in London, recalls that:

School as a great institution was a right thrill, we'd never experienced it.
Our brothers had gone to school, that kind of school, but women
hadn't. And of course, in those days, I keep telling people, I remember
what it was like not to have a vote. And in that atmosphere, where the
boys were everything, you went to this school where it was an entire
world of women. And these books, Angela Brazil and that were all
about our private world, it was our world. (archived interview, 1990)
his8

However, from the beginning the genre did not appeal only to girls who were
receiving a middle-class girls' education such as Simey's, but also to those
educated at home and from lower-middle-class and working-class
backgrounds. There were initially far more readers of school stories than
there were British girls receiving secondary education, and many girls
encountered the genre before the experience of school itself. It was not
simply the representation of readers' own lives, then, which appealed to
them about girls' school stories.
his9

The genre of girls' school stories is generally believed to have developed in

imitation of the boys' books, of which the first is generally taken to be Tom
Brown's Schooldays, published in 1857. In fact, however, the earliest known
boarding school story is a girls' school story, Sarah Fielding's The Governess:
or, Little Female Academy which was published in 1749. Between then and
the publication of Tom Brown's Schooldays, at least 87 other English school
stories were published, containing most of the characteristics which would
distinguish the genre in the second half of the nineteenth century.
his10

In the mid-1850s, the growth of the children's book market in Britain was
paralleled by the development of a style of writing for children where, as
Judith Rowbotham describes:

the intention was to give an illusion of reality through the setting of the
story in order . . . to coat the powder of the moral in the jam of a good
narrative. In order to increase both realism and digestibility, these
stories were carefully aimed at specific age, class and gender targets. . .
most authors . . . claimed to write stories that would act as guides,
influencing children in the ways in which they should think and act for
the rest of their lives.

This perspective on the purpose of British children's literature was to remain

dominant. However, since "realism" was becoming the world of the school
as well as the home for girls, women began to write more stories set in
schools.
his11

In general, the growth of the children's book market had beneficial effects
for girls and women. Rowbotham points out that:

the creation of a body of fiction concentrating specifically on an

adolescent middle-class female market actually aided the expansion of
women's role in society. It gave a considerable boost to the profession
of author, markedly increasing the number of women writers.

Between 1870, when the Education Act became law, and 1880, when
compulsory education was introduced in Britain, there was then a rapid
expansion in children's book publishing. Kimberley Reynolds records that:

By the 1880s, the range of fictional books alone included adventure

stories, historical fiction, school stories, and domestic stories . . .
Among those producing books for girls by this time were Mrs Ewing,
Anne Beale, L.T. Meade, Anna Sewell and Charlotte M. Yonge. Not
all of these writers or their works were new, but through cheap
reprints, lending libraries and periodical serialisation their works became
accessible to the masses, making it possible to see the commercial and
ideological potential of juvenile fiction as popular entertainment.
his12

The "lesson" inherent in nineteenth-century girls' school stories, though, was

The "lesson" inherent in nineteenth-century girls' school stories, though, was
still the desirability of traditional constructs of femininity. For example,
Meade set many of her stories in boarding establishments for teenage girls
and girls' colleges, with titles including A Sweet Girl Graduate (1891) and
Betty: A School Girl (1895), but, as Reynolds points out: "it becomes
evident that her books are consistently structured so as to underline
traditional images of femininity and to undermine the attractions of changes
to women's roles."

Through an inversion of genius, the school setting which had seemed

so threatening is, in this new off-shoot of girls' fiction, turned upon
itself and made the means of new and greater opportunities for self-
denial, service and adherence to the established principles of femininity.
At the same time, the works subtly instill a model and code of internal
self-regulation which had to replace the old, external parental and social
controls once girls no longer received their educations and preparation
for the world solely at home.

Girls' books, too, had already been assigned the low status that would
continue to mark them throughout the next century. Reynolds records that:

By 1880 . . . girls' books are coming to be seen as those which boys

will not read, an important step towards classifying them as works of
lower status and so of attributing to girls the need for an inferior
literature.

But Mitchell stresses that, at the same time, the new genre of the school
story created:

a community where the important rules are the children's own ethics
and mores. The new girl's popular fiction emphasises peer standards,
not adult standards - that is surely one reason adults came to ignore or
despise it. Meade, for example, ranks courage higher than obedience.
And more than anything else, her school stories value cohesion,
formation of a group, loyalty, and care of girls for one another.

The genre was to contain similarly contradictory messages throughout the

next century, and this was to be a key reason for its attracting criticism, since
both sets of messages had their opponents.
his13

By the end of the nineteenth century, though, the content of girls' school
stories had begun to change. Rowbotham points out that:

during the last decade of the century fiction began to reflect the
growing acceptance of girls' schools that deliberately aimed to parallel
more closely in organization and administration the long-established and
 more closely in organization and administration the long-established and
successful boys' institutions. It is probable that in this respect didactic
fiction was reflecting a trend that was more acceptable to the pupils
than to many conventional middle-class parents. . .

However . . . there was no fundamental change in majority attitudes

towards the essentials of feminine education. . .

Education remained for the majority of girls simply the way to

character improvement.

Despite these caveats, the fact that some middle-class schoolgirls, both real
and fictional, now had access to a very similar type of schooling to that of
their brothers signified a revolution in the status of and opportunities open to
girls. Mitchell records that:

By the 1890s, stories often used a high school setting and made the
conflict between home and school explicit. These high school stories
are more overtly feminist than a lot of girls' fiction, though the
feminism may be diluted in overlapping layers of tale and
interpretation.

Of the plots of turn-of-the-century high school stories, including "Mrs Henry

Clarke" 's A Clever Daughter (1896), Geraldine Mockler's The Four Miss
Whittingtons (1899), and Elinor D. Adams' A Queen Among Girls (1900),
Mitchell writes that:

day schools encourage a girl to accept family responsibility and learn

domestic skills while she gains the education to become a self-
supporting and responsible woman. At the psychological level - as light
reading - they supply the fantasy that one can have it all: parental love
and true womanliness without giving up ambition, success, and new-
woman independence.

After 1900, the genre also began to feature boarding schools modelled on
boys' public schools, such as Jessie Mansergh's Tom and Some Other Girls:
A Public School Story (1901). Other authors now writing in the genre
included May Baldwin, Dorothea Moore, Lilian F. Wevill, Mrs George de
Horne Vaizey and Helen Watson.
his14

The growth of the popularity of the genre at the beginning of the twentieth
century was related to the fact that girls, unlike boys, were encouraged to
read, and it was popularly supposed to help to develop their character.
Reynolds records that:
 Girls had more leisure at the end of the century than boys and fewer
ways of filling it. This was true even of working-class girls, for the
worsening economic situation both resulted in fewer opportunities for
work and led to social pressures which gave rise to a widespread retreat
into the home. In marked contrast to boys' reading, the reading of
fiction was regarded as a suitable pastime for young women, as long as
what they read was not considered to be challenging or corrupting in
any way. Moreover, unlike boys, girls were often encouraged to read
and study literature at school.

Reynolds adds that:

just as their abilities and areas of study tended to be dismissed as

inferior to those of boys, so what they read was regarded as frivolous
and classed as low-status, popular fiction. So it is that the largest area
within juvenile publishing, books written specifically for girls, and the
largest and most avid group of readers, girls (a term which in late-
Victorian and Edwardian England could encompass an age range the
upper limit of which was twenty-five) were constantly ridiculed by
teachers, critics and journalists, and their authors discredited, at least in
terms of literary standing.

This attitude was to remain unchallenged for much of the twentieth century
(see 7. The Critics of Girls' School Stories and 8. The Parodies of Girls'
School Stories for details).
his15

Then, in 1906, the publication of Angela Brazil's The Fortunes of Phillipa

rejuvenated the genre and signalled the beginning of its mass popularity.
Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig point out that: "Angela Brazil's first school
story struck at once an optimistic note; The Fortunes of Phillipa could not
have failed to be popular, when so many Victorian heroines had been
characterized solely by their misfortunes."

Angela Brazil broke deliberately with tradition, by expressing the girls'

attitudes from the inside. Instead of boring her readers with a long-
winded narrative view of events, she adopted as far as possible their
vocabulary and their viewpoint, to achieve a zest and immediacy which
the Edwardian schoolgirl must have relished. Her girls can be ruthless,
stupid, vain or pig-headed without incurring overt narrative disapproval;
the issue is rather the girls' tolerance of one another, than the author's
concern to instruct her readers (though that of course is implicit in the
stories' outcome, and occasionally does obtrude).

Shirley Foster and Judy Simons point out that Brazil's use of language was a
key reason for the popularity of her stories: "Brazil's slang, considered
sufficiently outrageous by contemporary readers for her books to be banned
from some schools, effectively creates its own anti-authoritarian code that is
distinctively juvenile and female." (This was to continue to be a factor in
the popularity of the genre, most notably in Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's Chalet
School series , where overt strictures against slang - presumably as a
defence against the criticisms which Brazil had faced - obscured the fact that
Brent-Dyer created an alternative schoolgirl language, including the use of
"fabulous" or "fab" which later entered mainstream discourse.)
his16

Brazil, the first of five authors who can be counted as the major writers in
the genre, went on to produce 45 full-length school stories and a number of
short stories (these latter were published in annuals) before her death in
1947. These were not only popular in Britain but internationally; Gillian
Freeman records that: "Not only Indian girls, but Dutch, French, Polish,
German, Scandinavian and American girls were reading Angela's books, the
illustrative style changing radically from one country to another." Brazil's
stories were characterised by their "realism"; very little happens in Brazil's
stories which does not conform to the rules that govern the external world,
although, along with the minor authors writing at the time, she does make
use of "deus ex machina" in her early sub-plots, restoring missing relatives or
lost inheritances.
his17

(Some use of "deus ex machina" was always to characterise the genre, and
to be one reason why the genre attracted criticism. Similarly, few of the
books are conventionally plotted, with the majority consisting only of a series
of loosely connected sub-plots.)
his18

In general, though, Brazil's stories picture girls studying together, organising

together and playing together, and their relationships with other girls, often
passionate, are of overwhelming importance. Brothers and families are often
represented within the stories, many of which are set in day schools, but the
school and its girls are shown as being at the centre of characters' lives. The
stories also include lengthy descriptions of holiday travels in Britain and
abroad which must have appealed to readers, the majority of whom would
have had no such experiences themselves. For readers abroad, of course,
most of the representations within the stories would have been outside of
their experience.
his19

Brazil's reworking of the genre meant that girls' school stories soon became
enormously popular, with other authors now including Ethel Talbot and May
Wynne. Mitchell records that:
 By the first decade of the twentieth century, "Books for Girls" had
become a standard category on the lists of British publishers. The genre
included school stories and tales of heroic action in the Indian Mutiny
or the Boer War, holiday adventures that showed girls on their own in
dangerous places, and career books featuring young artists and nurses
and typists in detective firms.

School stories were the most popular of all of these. Mitchell points out that,
despite Brazil's stress on more "realistic" stories, the school experiences
represented still remained fantasy for most of the genre's readers. "It was
thus primarily in fiction that school became a privileged space for girls'
interactions and ethics."
his20

In 1913, Elsie J. Oxenham's first school story, Rosaly's New School, was
published, followed in 1914 by The Girls of the Hamlet Club. This story, set
in a Buckinghamshire school where a division existed between the wealthier
girls who lived in the town and the poorer girls who lived in the surrounding
hamlets, marked the first of the series which was later to become known
simply as "The Abbey Girls" after the publication of the book of the same
name in 1920. Oxenham was to become known as the second major author
writing in the genre, but in contrast to Brazil, representations of schooling
itself are largely absent from Oxenham's books, even when the action
supposedly takes place within school. Instead, the action revolves around the
girls themselves and their leisure organisations, chiefly the Camp Fire
movement, the Girl Guides and, centrally, folk dancing. The majority of the
Abbey Girls books, in fact, are set away from school, and many of them
take place when the "girls" are adults.
his21

Perhaps Oxenham recognised that it was schoolgirl society rather than school
itself which was central to readers' enjoyment of the books. Margaret Simey,
a member of Oxenham's own Camp Fire group, recalls that:

In those days . . . [St Paul's] was a boys' public school really . . . and it
was all directed to examinations, and the peak of my achievement was
that my hockey captain was Evelyn Sharp, who was the first woman
civil servant to head a department. And that was the life we were
directed towards. She wasn't of the tiniest interest to me, and so I
sailed through school never even listening to a word. . .

I think what [Oxenham] gave to me was all that school didn't. All that
learning Latin and Greek, passing exams and things were no good to
me at all. And [the Camp Fire movement], we put all the lights out and
we drew the curtains, and you dressed up in your Indian stuff with the
 head band and everything, and you lit a candle, and you recited verses
from Hiawatha. And I can see the contrast, it must have been
wonderful. Now I laugh at it. But on the other hand we worked for
badges and things, just like Guides. (archived interview, 1990)

In fact, Simey became the first woman to take a social science degree, and
later went on to a distinguished career. But her memories show clearly that
girls did not want mere representations of their school experiences to
entertain them during their leisure time.
his22

However, for most of the genre's authors, school was central to girls' school
stories. 1920 saw the publication of Dorita Fairlie Bruce's The Senior Prefect
(republished as Dimsie Goes to School), her first full-length story about the
Jane Willard Foundation (three short stories previously having appeared in
annuals). Bruce quickly established herself as the third major author of the
genre. Eva Löfgren records that:

The success with Dimsie Maitland gave rise to the rapid appearance of
five sequels to The Senior Prefect in as many years, and a reprint of
the first novel as soon as 1923. The concept of a series of full size
novels about the schooldays of one particular character, or of the same
group of characters, was a fresh one at this time, and one that had
hardly been tried in girls' fiction. Dorita Fairlie Bruce is a pioneer in this
respect, although Elsie J. Oxenham employs it about the same time.

The secret of the success of the series did not lie in the continuation of the
adventures of a single heroine, who was less important in the books than the
title suggests, so much as the continuation of the adventures of the group to
which the heroine belonged. Following Oxenham and Bruce, the genre then
became characterised by series rather than by individual books, with the
development of what were effectively sub-genres by different authors. Bruce
went on to write two other series, the St Bride's & Maudsley and the
Springdale series, as well as two sets of three stories which each starred the
same heroine, the Toby books and the Sally books.
his23

Series commonly lasted for six or nine books, but in 1925 the publication of
Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's The School at the Chalet marked the beginning of
the longest-running series of the genre. The Chalet School series was
eventually to encompass 59 books and nearly half a century; the last book in
the series, Prefects for the Chalet School, being published posthumously in
1970. Brent-Dyer, who soon became known as the fourth major writer in
the genre, created a school which capitalised on the attractions of "abroad"
for its readers, set as it was in the Austrian Alps. Wartime meant that Brent-
Dyer had to relocate the school, first to the Channel Island of Guernsey and
then, after the Nazi occupation, to the Herefordshire countryside where she
lived herself. But after a brief period when she moved the school to a Welsh
island after the end of the war, she returned the school to an equally exotic
location, Switzerland, where it continued to flourish. Brent-Dyer's series was
also unusual in that it featured both Anglican and Roman Catholic girl,
together with girls and women of different nationalities who were given equal
respect to the British, and girls were expected to be trilingual in English,
French and German.
his24

The period between the two World Wars marked the height of the popularity
of the genre, with other writers including Marjorie Barnard, Nancy Breary,
Dora Chapman, Christine Chaundler, E.M. Channon, Alys Chatwyn, E.E.
Cowper, Dorothy Dennison, Josephine Elder, Joy Francis, Mary Gervaise,
Joan Butler-Joyce, Irene Mossop and Norah Mylrea. By the beginning of the
Second World War, though, critical opposition had become more vocal, at
the same time as the range of fiction available for children was widening.
However, this did not prevent women from continuing to write in the genre,
among them Enid Blyton, the most popular British children's writer of the
twentieth century. Blyton first began to write school stories in the late 1930s
with The Naughtiest Girl in the School, serialised in her children's magazine
Sunny Stories before being published in book form in 1940. This was
followed by two sequels: The Naughtiest Girl Again (1942) and The
Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor (1945). Although very popular, though, these
stories were set in a progressive, mixed-gender school and cannot really be
considered to be part of the genre. In contrast, Blyton's St Clare's (1941-45)
and Malory Towers (1946-1951) series, containing six books each, were
archetypal girls' school stories and immediately became enormously popular,
remaining in print in the 1990s.
his25

Who were the women who created and sustained the genre? Auchmuty
notes that: "as professional writers they were following one of the two
traditionally acceptable careers for 'ladies' - teaching being the other - and
one which, moreover, was (rather more than teaching) a source of pride
rather than embarrassment or resignation." Few came from similar
backgrounds to their heroines, though, nor did they have similar experiences
of schooling. Brazil, born the daughter of a cotton-mill manager in 1869,
attended the most similar types of school - the preparatory department of a
Girls' High School and a leading modern girls' day school, Ellerslie - but this
was before the modernisation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. For example, Brazil later wrote that: "When I go to see modern
girls' schools, and know what jolly times they have with games and clubs
and acting, I feel that I missed a very great deal." Meanwhile Oxenham,
and acting, I feel that I missed a very great deal." Meanwhile Oxenham,
born the daughter of a writer in 1880, spent most of her girlhood in the
London suburb of Ealing and attended private schools there. Bruce, who
was the daughter of a civil engineer, was born in Spain in 1885 and spent
much of her childhood in Scotland, before eventually moving to the London
suburb of Ealing where she also attended school.
his26

Brent-Dyer, born the daughter of a ships' surveyor in 1894, grew up in

South Shields in a terraced house with no inside toilet or bathroom, and had
what she later regarded as being a poor education. Her father left home
when she was three, a fact which her mother kept hidden, pretending to be a
widow. Blyton was the daughter of a salesman and was born in a flat above
a shop in South London in 1897. Soon afterwards her father joined the
family "mantle warehousing" company and they moved to a villa in the Kent
suburb of Beckenham, where she lived and went to school until she left
home to train as a teacher. Blyton's father left the family when she was
thirteen, and her mother pretended that her husband was away in order to
avoid social stigma. It is not surprising, in the circumstances, that parents are
absent from so many school stories.
his27

Löfgren argues that the differences between the school experiences of the
writers of girls' school stories and that of their heroines and readers can be
explained by the fact that the genre reflects, not the prevailing reality of
contemporary girls' schools during the height of popularity of the genre, but
rather:

the atmosphere of the pioneering era in the late 19th C. The period
between the World Wars is the heyday of the British girls' school story,
and it signifies a belated triumph of the pioneers of the reformation of
female education, quite independent of the successes and failures of
this reformation in real life. This is a modern version of the nostalgia
for an Arcadian era. These stories embody the myth of the Great
School for Girls.

This reading fits with the actual period in which most of the writers were
themselves educated, and is particularly convincing since, for the most part,
the writers encountered the myth rather than the reality when schoolgirls
themselves.
his28

Likewise Gill Frith argues that: "The school story has always been a dream,
a fantasy, has never had more than a tenuous connection with 'real' life."
Löfgren points out that:

The "realism" of a formula story is closer to the classical conception of

 The "realism" of a formula story is closer to the classical conception of
"mimesis" or imitation, in the sense of imitating nature by means of
imitating older, model depictions of nature. . . This is how a writer of
school stories might create a successful literary world of boarding
school only by imitating the worlds of other writers - assisted by her or
his own imagination - without any personal experiences from a real
school of this kind. . .

Once the genre is established, writers copy each other rather than
reality, following and contributing to the expectations of the genre,
slowly changing it. . .

No writer in the genre could . . . leave the ever growing line of

percursors and colleagues out of consideration - even when deliberately
deviating from their models.

From the beginning, then, the world of girls' school stories owed more to
myth than to reality, and authors read and used characteristics from each
other's work. This self-referencing also functioned to make it clear to readers
that the books were part of the genre as a whole, since this was obviously a
key motivation for their reading. And, of course, the genre's characteristics
developed as characteristics from one author's work became used by other
writers and became stock elements of the genre as a whole.
his29

Many of the authors did have teaching experience, though, and of the five
main authors, Blyton began her career as a junior teacher and governess;
while Brent-Dyer taught for more than thirty years, eventually running her
own school. However, Brazil, Bruce and Oxenham did not work outside the
home and had to rely on memories, contact with contemporary schoolgirls
and their knowledge of the "myth" to create their stories. Brazil defended
this perspective, writing that:

I have always had the strong feeling that had I added B.A. to my name,
forced myself into a scholastic mould, and become a headmistress, I
should never, never, never have written stories about schoolgirls, at
any rate not from the schoolgirl's point of view, which is the attitude
that has appealed to me most.
his30

This was a period where up to one in four women remained unmarried, and
Löfgren notes that:

Of British female children's writers born between 1880 and 1900 less
than half the number were expressly said to have been married,
compared with about two-thirds of the generation born between 1901
 compared with about two-thirds of the generation born between 1901
and 1911.

It is interesting to note that Brent-Dyer, Bruce, Brazil and Oxenham never

married, while Blyton, who married twice but always used her birth name
professionally, presented a facade of happy marriage to her readers while
hiding the fact that her first marriage had broken down. Blyton's biographer,
Barbara Stoney, and her daughter Imogen Smallwood both describe her as
being unfulfilled by domesticity, unable to cook and delegating the
responsibility for housework and childcare (although she was able to sew) .
Much to Imogen's continuing grief, she preferred her imaginary worlds, her
fans and a close woman friend to family life, and she avoided close contact
with her children. Blyton eventually died in a nursing home in 1968, having
lost touch with reality and possibly suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.
his31

Meanwhile Brent-Dyer spent most of her adult life living with her mother
and step-father, and after her step-father's death was joined by a succession
of women lodgers of her mother's generation; eventually, after her mother's
death, moving in with her friends the Matthewmans until her death in 1969.
Bruce looked after her parents until they died and her dead brother's children
until they grew up, after which she lived with a woman friend from 1949
until her friend died in the early 1960s, then living alone until her own death
in 1970. Brazil lived with her brother and sister until her death in 1947; and
Oxenham with her sisters after the death of their respective parents, dying
herself in 1960.
his32

Were the authors feminists? Certainly Brazil is known to have had

suffragette friends . However, there are no records of the five main authors
taking part in any political activity, nor evidence of them overtly promoting
organised feminism within their books. (Indeed, there are occasional anti-
suffragette references in Brazil and Bruce's work.) Rather, with the
exception of Blyton, who was clearly unhappy with family life, the authors
lives' were girl- and women-centred. Brent-Dyer's life revolved around her
teaching, her mother, her lodgers and her friends. Brazil involved herself
with local schools in Coventry and gave parties for local children, as well as
being active in numerous charities. Bruce was involved in the Girls' Guildry
movement (which predated the Girl Guide movement) for more than thirty
years. Oxenham was Guardian to a girls' Camp Fire group (originally an
American girls' movement), as well as being an enthusiastic member of the
English Folk Dance Society, then dominated by women.
his33

There has been speculation that many of the women who wrote girls' school
stories were lesbian, but there has been little evidence to support this, if by
being lesbian we mean that they consciously had sexual feelings towards
being lesbian we mean that they consciously had sexual feelings towards
other women, resulting on occasion in genital contact. Helen McClelland
notes that Brent-Dyer "was chiefly renowned at college for the way in which
she took violent crushes on other students" ; Gillian Freeman describes
Brazil's "possessive passion"" for her friend Dorothy Milward; and there is
speculation about the nature of Blyton's relationship with her friend Dorothy
Richards. It should be remembered, though, that the early part of the
twentieth century was still a period when it was accepted that women could
have passionate relationships with each other, and that these were generally
believed not to be sexual. McClelland warns that:

Today it has become almost impossible to believe in the existence of

any adult woman so innocent - and ignorant - that all sexual or
homosexual undercurrents flow past her unnoticed. Yet such women
did exist. Moreover it seems probable that they numbered among them
many of those who wrote schoolgirl fiction in the pre-war days.

Of course, at the same time it was believed that women did not have sexual
feelings at all, so, whether sexual or not, it is difficult to see how their
relationships with other women could be ranked below those relationships
which they had with men. Certainly the writers were girl- and women-
centred, and since they deviated from the heterosexual norms for twentieth-
century British women of marriage and motherhood, they can be regarded as
being queer.
his34

In particular, it is interesting to note that both Blyton and Brent-Dyer are

described by their biographers as being noticeably loud and exuberant girls,
unable to conform to a "feminine" norm. Perhaps their writing, regarded as
being a "quiet" activity, later provided their only outlet for travelling, for
being noisy, for being the centre of attention - in the world of their
imagination rather than as they experienced it externally. Barbara Stoney
further writes that Blyton explicitly rejected a domestic role as a girl in
favour of reading and going on excursions with her father (p18), withdrawing
to an upstairs room or a friend's house after he left home (p27) . She was
the first girl in her school to have her long hair cut off to shoulder length ,
and later admitted that she had based her "Famous Five" character George -
the girl who longed to be a boy and who dressed and acted like one
whenever she could - on herself.

George is real, but she is grown-up now . . . The real George was
short-haired, freckled, sturdy, and snub-nosed. She was bold and
daring, hot-tempered and loyal. She was sulky, as George is, too, but
she isn't now. We grow out of those failings - or we should! Do you
like George? I do.
Stoney also notes that Blyton was unable to have children until she
underwent a course of hormone treatment for an undeveloped uterus which
had remained characteristic of that of a pre-adolescent girl. In the 1990s,
what is known of Blyton's life is commonly taken as evidence that she
"refused to grow up", but it may be that she was simply transgendered in a
society which did not recognise this as being a possibility.
his35

One final point about the authors of girls' school stories. Only Blyton, who
wrote general children's fiction for all age-groups, made substantial amounts
of money from her writing: for example, in 1923, almost twenty years before
she started writing school stories, she earned over £300, the price of a small
suburban house. Brent-Dyer, meanwhile, despite her writing output and her
popularity, had to rely on her income from teaching and her lodgers to
support herself and her mother for much of her life. The profits from girls'
school stories, for the most part, went straight into the pockets of the male
publishers; the financial reward given to the authors, along with their status
generally, was always low.
his36

Yet the authors took their writing extremely seriously. Brazil worked in a
studio in her garden, plotting her books and her characters before beginning
work on her story.

I am often asked if I only write when "the spirit moves me". If so, I
fear I should get very little done. I think it is absolutely necessary to
have certain definite daily hours set aside for literary work. Sometimes
one's ideas flow best in the evening, but often the morning is one's
brightest period.

Blyton wrote in a much quicker and less structured way, but allowed nothing
to interfere with her daily work ; while Brent-Dyer on occasion asked her
mother to take her classes so that she could write .
his37

However, their work was not taken seriously by anyone other than girls. The
critical reception of the genre was marked by hostility for most of the
twentieth century (see 7. The Critics of Girls' School Stories for details ),
and by the 1930s men were familiar enough with the genre to begin to
ridicule it in the form of parodies (see 8. The Parodies of Girls' School
Stories for details ). Even teachers despised the stories; Freeman describes
how:

On the first day of the autumn term in 1936, a new girl to St Paul's in
London was stunned by a dramatic address from Ethel Shrudwick, the
principal, who at morning prayers expressed the wish to collect the
 principal, who at morning prayers expressed the wish to collect the
books of Angela Brazil and burn them.

Only girl power, then, was responsible for the rise of the genre and for its
continuing popularity. The genre dominated popular fiction for girls until the
middle of the twentieth century, when it was briefly and to a much lesser
extent joined by adventure stories for girls (often set in schools ), ballet
stories (usually set in ballet schools ) and pony stories (often featuring riding
schools ).
his38

Publishers' attentions then turned to producing books aimed at both sexes,

influenced by the growth of children's book criticism following the end of the
Second World War (see 7. The Critics of Girls' School Stories, 1949-1995
for details ). The representation of the "reality" of girls' lives in fiction and
other forms of popular culture, always taken to be important in children's
literature, was now believed to be paramount, as was the production of
"good" children's books. In 1941, Penguin Books launched the first Puffin
fiction books for children as "something of a counterblast to those who were
thinking in terms of Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton" . Librarians also began
to promote alternatives to genre fiction, and opposition to Blyton's books in
particular became widespread. Generally, the rise of other types of
children's literature was seen as marking a "second Golden Age" of children's
books, the first "Golden Age" being the half-century before 1915.
his39

However, many authors continued to write in the genre, among them Mabel
Esther Allan, Margaret Biggs, Norma Bradley, Rita Coatts, Gwendoline
Courtney, Antonia Forest, Janet Grey, Judith Grey, Helen S. Humphries,
Sylvia Little, Joanna Lloyd, Phyllis Matthewman, Constance M. White, Jane
Shaw and Elizabeth Tarrant. Popularity was not confined to Britain, either.
In addition to widespread publication in the English-speaking parts of the
former British Empire, the 1940s and 1950s marked a period of popularity
for the genre in Europe. For example, in Sweden translations were published
of Bruce's "Dimsie" books, Blyton's St Clare's series and the school stories
of Phyllis Matthewman, together with re-issues of translations of earlier
school stories, including those of Christine Chaundler. Brent-Dyer's books
were published in Portugese, while Blyton's girls' books were republished in
translation all over the world. Clearly the genre's representation of "reality"
could not have been a factor here.
his40

Brent-Dyer's published writing output actually increased with the closure of

her school in 1948, but in June 1955 Bruce's publishers, the Oxford
University Press, allowed all but the last four of her books to go out of print,
and the publication of The Bartle Request the following year marked the end
of her association with them. The Press, as with contemporary critics,
of her association with them. The Press, as with contemporary critics,
librarians, teachers and parents, believed that the genre was effectively dead,
and should certainly be buried as quickly as possible. Despite this, though,
when the Chalet School series was launched in paperback by Collins in
1967, 198,539 copies were sold between May and October 1967: 169,938 at
home and 28,601 in the export market. Sheila Ray points out that: "The
writers of the 'Second Golden Age' had failed to make an impact on many
children."
his41

Girls' schooling had, of course, by now changed radically since the beginning
of the twentieth century. By the second quarter of the century there was
already a widespread belief that girls required a different type of education to
that of boys, aimed at their domestic role in life, rather than their schools
mimicking those of boys, while at the same time girls' culture was breaking
up . At the same time there was a strong movement in favour of co-
educational schools, although it took time to make its effects felt. The end of
the Empire - which meant that many parents returned home to the UK - and
the availability of free secondary education following the Second World War
then led to the closure of the majority of the privately owned boarding and
day schools where girls' school stories were set. Girls were still largely
educated separately - indeed, working-class girls had only just become
"schoolgirls" in large numbers - but the ethos driving their education was
now very different.
his42

By the 1960s, there was, despite evidence that girls achieved more when
educated separately, a strong belief in the superiority of mixed-gender
education as providing better training for "real life". This led many of the
remaining girls' schools (both state-run and privately owned) to close, to
amalgamate with boys' schools or to open their doors to boys. Girls were
offered a similar core curriculum, but were still expected to study cookery
and needlework while boys learned metalwork and woodwork and to play
separate sports. Within the mixed-gender, state-run schools, uniforms were
then either relaxed or abolished, taking away a staple identifier of the
schoolgirl (although many British schools have reintroduced traditional
uniforms since the beginning of the 1980s). In reality, too, girls' space is now
much more proscribed; fear of assault, the increase in road traffic and the
criminalisation of groups of young people mean that, out of school, today's
schoolgirls are often isolated within their homes.
his43

A similar picture emerges in an analysis of mainstream British popular

culture of the 1990s. Girls are usually portrayed as attending mixed-gender,
state-run schools (for example in the long-running BBC series Grange Hill,
which is set in outer London). Plots may sometimes centre around groups of
which is set in outer London). Plots may sometimes centre around groups of
girls, but the all-female, enclosed world which is so crucial to the genre of
girls' school stories is absent. Instead, girls' experiences are set within mixed-
gender (and race), middle- and working-class school communities and sub-
cultures. The characters' identity is now that of school students rather than
schoolgirls, and their lives outside of school are portrayed as being equally or
more important than their school experiences.
his44

This is generally reflected in other children's books, magazines and television

series in Britain in the 1990s: girls are more likely to be shown within the
local community and their family than in school; where they are more likely
to be shown in mixed groups; and to be identified by the American-inspired
image of the teenager. There is no separate space for girls within
broadcasting; the majority of children's books are produced for a "mixed"
readership; and girls are left with only magazines such as Just 17 and Mizz to
call their own. These magazines target girls as consumers, and readers'
careers, political interests and aspirations are ignored . Content instead
centres around boyfriends, sex, make up, shopping, popular music and
fashion - subjects which are absent from or frowned upon in girls' school
stories. Sport is most likely to be represented by male sports stars whose
sports themselves are all-male: since the Second World War team sports
such as hockey and cricket have declined rapidly amongst girls and women;
to be replaced by activities such as aerobics which have strong links to body
image and weight loss.
his45

In other English-speaking countries, school and higher education continue to

be represented as being central to characters' lives within popular culture.
For example, in the US television series Beverly Hills 90210, scenes are
frequently set in classrooms, and exams, discipline, sport and activities such
as producing the school newspaper are all seen as being worthy topics for
plot development. Undesirable characters are those who do not work hard at
school. Likewise, in the Australian soap opera Home and Away, the school is
an integral part of the community and many plots are set in it. Bobby, a
reformed wild girl, has her finest moment when she gets her Higher School
Certificate (HSC) and receives the Pupil of the Year award. Angel leaves the
streets to study for her HSC; as does Finn, who stays on for another year
after failing the first time; while Marilyn returns as a mature student
specifically to take her HSC. Aspiring to succeed educationally is presented
as being both important and within the reach of all.
his46

But in Britain in the 1990s, popular culture presents education as being both
marginal and beyond the aspirations of working-class characters. For
example, in the film The Higher Mortals, made by the Children's Film Unit
example, in the film The Higher Mortals, made by the Children's Film Unit
in 1993 and broadcast on Channel 4 on 25 September 1994 from 5.40-
7.00pm, the plot revolves around five inner-city children, four boys and one
girl, who are sent by the female Minister for Education to a minor public
school which is threatened with recession-related closure. The children
kidnap the Minister in order to make her admit that her plan is mistaken,
asking why they are being trained for the "scrap heap". Then, when she
tricks them, they burn the school down. The leading character, a schoolgirl,
ends the film by saying that the school had to go as it was completely
outdated; it is only now that her real education is beginning.
his47

In the BBC soap opera EastEnders, school is presented only as a site for
bullying and crime. In terms of higher education, the character Michelle
Fowler goes to university, but the students are shown only as taking drugs
and as acting irresponsibly towards her daughter Vicky, and a student
boyfriend is revealed as a psychopath who makes continual threatening
phone calls. The storyline returns to the university only when Michelle
graduates, when she begins an affair with her much older tutor, Geoff. Her
family are seen to treat her education with respect - "A Fowler with a degree,
now that would be something," says her brother Mark (17 May 1994) - but
they treat it as a one-off incident, beyond the realistic aspirations for their
family and class. One other character, Kelvin, also goes to university, but
this is used simply as a means of writing him out of the series and no scenes
are set there.
his48

Similarly, in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside, schoolchildren take drugs,

steal cars, go joyriding, smoke, have underage sex and abortions, and bully
other children - there are no positive representations. Only three characters,
Karen Grant, Mike Dixon and Beth Jordache, go on into higher education.
Of these, Karen leaves the series, while Mike's studies are characterised by
his interest in his band and video-making; there are no scenes showing his
ordinary studies and interactions with other students. After graduation, Mike
is unemployed and shown to be a dreamer, wanting to be a writer but
without the talent to succeed; the message to the audience is clearly that his
education was irrelevant to a working-class young man. Beth Jordache,
meanwhile, goes to medical school only to begin a lesbian affair with her
tutor, and dies before she graduates.
his49

In the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, Andy MacDonald, the only young
character to reach university, drops out to become a trainee supermarket
manager, since the university world is irrelevant. Eventually he returns, but
his graduation is marred by psychological problems resulting from his
mother's affair with a gangster, and he himself is shown to be disenchanted
mother's affair with a gangster, and he himself is shown to be disenchanted
with the educational system. And in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale, the
University of Leeds is used as a setting to explore themes of disability and
lesbianism, but the studies itself are unimportant and we never even find out
what subject Rachel Hughes is studying. She then drops out after the death
of her brother; her studies are irrelevant to "real life" and she begins a series
of typically female administrative jobs, marries and has a child.
his50

Nonetheless, despite representations of education elsewhere in British

popular culture, new books are still being added to the genre of girls' school
stories. For example: in the 1970s Anne Digby began her Trebizon series, set
in a modern girls' private boarding school, with new books being published
into the 1990s; and in the early 1990s Jean Ure began her Peter High series,
set in a modern girls' state day school. The genre remains a popular form of
reading for British girls, across boundaries of both race and class, and despite
the fact that reading generally has declined in popularity among children and
teenagers (see 9. The Fans of Girls' School Stories, 1990s Girl Fans for
details ). It is also, to a lesser extent, popular among women: from the mid-
1980s onwards no fewer than six fan clubs were established in the UK for
adult women fans, all with international memberships; and there are parallel
organisations in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (see 9. The Fans
of Girls' School Stories, 1990s Women Fans for details .) Since 1996, fans
have also established their own email discussion groups and web sites .
his51

Other, distorted images of the schoolgirl remain common in wider British

popular culture. Parodic images of the schoolgirl and the girls' school story
continue to be prominent (see 8. The Parodies of Girls' School Stories for
details ). The slang use of "fabulous", invented by Elinor M.Brent-Dyer in
her Chalet School series, has permeated the national consciousness with
Jennifer Saunders' BBC comedy series Absolutely Fabulous (with Dawn
French, Jennifer Saunders also regularly writes and performs instantly
recognisable sketches set in girls' boarding schools). Pornography and
prostitution, too, draw heavily on the schoolgirl image. In fact, the image of
the schoolgirl is frequently associated with that of the British woman; the
Conservative MP Virginia Bottomley was often caricatured in the media as a
"head girl" in the early 1990s.
his52

No such parallel exists for boys' school stories, however, despite the girls'
genre being compared extremely unfavourably to the boys' books by the
critics throughout the twentieth century, and the homo-erotic associations of
boys' boarding school life. Yet, in contrast to women, school background
remains important throughout British men's lives (judging by television
representations, the image of the male Conservative MP as schoolboy would
representations, the image of the male Conservative MP as schoolboy would
in fact be far more apt). "School feeds adult feeling of all kinds . . . It is
connected with a person's sense of the kind of man he is, the kind of
background he has or admits to, the niche he expects to occupy in the world
or would like his children to have."
his53

Yet the genre of girls' school stories has been regarded as unworthy of
academic study until recently, despite the fact that the boys' books have
consistently received attention. No doubt the key reason is the fact that it is
popular fiction, produced by women, for girls. Foster and Simons note that:
"Modern critical theory has come relatively late to children's literature, in
particular that written for girls." With the strength of Cultural Studies and
Media Studies within the academy today, it is easy to forget that only in the
last quarter of the twentieth century was popular fiction or "low culture"
deemed worthy of serious study. Even then, women authors are, of course,
still taken far less seriously than men in every field of literary studies.
his54

Similarly, literature produced for children has always been viewed as being
less important than that produced for adults . Gaye Tuchman has found
that, in nineteenth-century publishing houses, manuscripts were ranked in the
descending order of "high prestige", "men's specialities", "mixed specialities"
and "women's specialities", with children's books falling into the latter
category. . Frank Eyre points out that: "Writers of children's books still
achieve little recognition in any but their highly specialised professional circle,
and writers about children's books are still regarded, consciously or
unconsciously, as a kind of sub-species of critic - doing a secondary task
from which the most successful of them may one day hope to be promoted
to more responsible work." And, as Peter Hunt describes, children's books
generally have been regarded as being "not a fit subject for academic study"
. In fact, the study of childhood in general has been seen as invalid; there is
no place in the academy for Children's Studies, despite the fact that, as Hunt
points out: "It can be argued that [children] belong, in effect, to a different
culture - possibly an anti- or counter-culture" .
his55

Critics of children's books are therefore under pressure to prove the

"literary" value of their subject, and the very fact that children's popular
fiction is commercial fiction makes it suspect. Jacqueline Rose points out
that: "The association of money and childhood is not a comfortable one.
Money is impure. . . It is contaminated by association and exchange. Not so
childhood." And since the majority of all types of critic are male, they have
been unable to understand the resonance which the genre has for the
majority of British girls and women. For whatever reason, both the critics
and the male parodists have ensured that the genre's weaknesses and
and the male parodists have ensured that the genre's weaknesses and

supposed weaknesses are better known than the actual stories. Meanwhile
feminists assumed until recently that all of the messages contained within
earlier books for girls - synonymous with a female authorship - must be
negative ones. As a result, whereas the study of women writing romance
fiction has rightly been regarded as worthy by feminists , this is largely
because it has been perceived as relevant to women's lives today. Girls'
school stories, in contrast, have generally been perceived as irrelevant and
their popularity an embarrassing anomaly .
his56

Clearly, though, the continuing importance of the genre's role in British

society, as well as its historical position, means that it merits closer
examination. In general, Hunt points out that:

Children's books have, and have had, great social and educational
influence; they are important both politically and commercially. . .

From a historical point of view, children's books are a valuable

contribution to social, literary and bibliographical history; from a
contemporary point of view, they are vital to literacy and culture . . . in
popular culture terms, they are central.

Hunt also points out that, worldwide, the study of children's literature is now
a widely accepted research activity.

In the USA and Australia, especially, there are many programmes in

children's literature and major research libraries. Carolyn Field's
Special Collections in Children's Literature lists 267 collections;
Tessa Chester's Sources of Information about Children's Books lists
157 specialist collections (including the 200,000-volume Opie collection
in the Bodleian). There are specialist journals and societies, including
the International Research Society for Children's Literature, a major
European centre at the Internationale Jugendbibliotek in Munich, and
national children's book centres in Germany, Sweden, Australia, Wales
and elsewhere. Children's literature is an accepted division of the
activities of the Modern Language Association of America.
his57

With regard to the study of girls' school stories in particular, girls and women
have few cultural spaces to call their own and few images of themselves, and
it is important to reclaim and to re-evaluate them. As Maggie Humm points
out: "A feminist re-vision makes a historical, cultural and psychic
examination of women's cultural past, and creates a women's history." It is
equally important to look at the ways in which the genre has been opposed
equally important to look at the ways in which the genre has been opposed
and ridiculed by the critics and the parodists, the reasons why this took
place, and why nonetheless there has been a continuing readership which has
ensured the genre's survival until at least the end of the twentieth century.
And in a society where literacy has never been more important and yet
reading is declining, a greater understanding of how and why the genre has
given pleasure in the twentieth century should be helpful in determining how
to encourage young people - boys particularly, since they read the least - to
continue to read in the twenty-first.
his58

Next: 6. The World of the Chalet School

Return to: Virtual Worlds of Girls Index