feather_ghyll

Seven Sisters at Queen Anne’s: Evelyn Smith. Blackie, my copy is inscribed 1933

Seven sisters? Yes, the scenario set out in the book’s title is a lot, ( Read more... )

Biddy and Quilla: Evelyn Smith, Blackie

Evelyn Smith provides a sympathetic look at growing pains through a burgeoning friendship here. A few plot contrivances aside, it’s realistic, psychologically accurate and amusing.

Priscilla ‘Quilla’ Thornton is ( Read more... )

I’ll post an overview of a few books I’ve read over the holidays eventually, but this post is a look back at 2015, following a tradition started by my first post of 2015 when I said I looked forward to the next adventures of Wells and Wong. Well, Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens (in which the 1930s schoolgirls investigate another mystery, this time in Daisy Wells’s country house home) lived up to my expectations. I enjoyed Kate Saunders’s Beswitched, originally published a few years ago, but taking the reader back to a 1930s boarding school, a fraction more, even. I loved reading Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery and Gail Carriger’s Etiquette & Espionage.

Turning to hadrbacks, I enjoyed The Little Betty Wilkinson by Evelyn Smith, even though I think she’s written better books. I did read a book each by the ‘big four’: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chudleigh Hold, Sally’s Summer Term by Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Tomboys at the Abbey by Elsie J. Oxenham, which I didn’t review, and For the School Colours by Angela Brazil.

(In the first paragraph, I build up to my favourite and do the opposite in the second.)

Perhaps the best book I read this year was ‘Rose Under Fire’ by Elizabeth Wein, which is wonderful and harrowing, and I feel incapable of writing about it. I also really loved Helena McEwen’s Invisible River.

I reread Katherine L. Oldmeadow’s The Fortunes of Jacky, which stands the test of time, and now I have no more Oldmeadows to reread. I am, obviously, looking out for more by her in all the shops that sell second-hand books! I hope to read the next case Hazel Wong writes up and the second in the Finishing School series, but I expect to read EBD's 'Fardingales' as I have a copy in the depths of my 'to read' pile.

Terry’s Best Term: Evelyn Smith Blackie (an inscription reveals that my copy was a gift in Christmas 1959, although the content suggests that it was first published during the interwar period, and an article in Folly says it was 1926,)

She thought of Terry, and her firm little face softened. She liked Terry, liked her tremendously. People always laughed at schoolgirl friendships, but then people laughed at mothers for thinking their babies so wonderful, at old maids for coddling their dogs—at lots of things, nearly all women’s things. Julia thought over that, and decided that it wasn’t fair.
(p. 170)

( Read more... )

I'm currently dipping in and out of The Big Book of School Stories for Girls, edited by Mrs Herbert Strand and published by Humphrey Milford - the Oxford University Press. I've never been one to buy annuals and what-do-you-call-thems...anthologies? I prefer girls own stories in longer form, on the whole, and here's always the possibility of stories told in cartoon, which I'm not fussed about. However, it's not too bad, some of the stories have been amusing. The was a Dimsie story 'All Fools Day' (I don't know if it was written specially for this collection or not). It wasn't the pranks that Puck and co came up with so much as their reasoning.

I also love the illustrations, which seem to have been done by a variety of contributors. I forgot to mention when reviewing Torley Grange that while I appreciate Girls Gone By's habit of using the original art work, I didn't much like the cover. This will show my very limited appreciation of art, but I'm not sure that drawing schoolgirls as influenced by Edvard Munch's Scream with a jaundiced tinge, when you're not going for an Addams Family vibe is particularly attractive.

Anyhow, here are a couple of links that I've collected, mainly from trying to find information out about the writers I've recently been reading. I discovered (it must have been stated in the intro, but didn't sink in) that Torley Grange was Corutney's first book, which explains a few things and is rather impressive.

The University of Reading has her papers, there's a short bio here.

And this is an in-depth biographical article on Evelyn Smith by Hilary Clare for Folly magazine.