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Stanton's Comes of Age: Sylvia Little, Stanmore Press 1947

This was the first Sylvia Little book I've read since finding out that Sylvia Little = Eric Leyland, who also used the name Nesta Grant, so, I was hyper-aware of any mention of gender, often in the form of authorial 'asides' about boys' and girls' natures. I hadn't ever suspected that the author was really a man, although I had noticed that boys did tread into the hallowed school grounds in Little's books. I've come across very few mixed boarding school a la Hogwarts. Following the real-life culture, older children's books and their fictional schools were strictly divided. I can think of one Mabel Esther Allan, there's the school that Blyton's Naughtiest Girl goes to, and there may be others, but I don't recall them, except for at least one school (Castle School, I think) that Little has written about. I think that in the other Little book I own, Queen's has a close relationship with a boys school (?), which is the case between the girls' school in Stanton's Comes of Age, the Trebizon books (set much later, though) and By Honour Bound link by Bessie Marchant and Sally at School. You know, the sort of school where the heroines' brothers go to. The language is of being chums rather than girlfriends and boyfriends (hi, Trebizon). This type of arrangement is still pretty rare in most of the girls' boarding schools I've read. Boys are for Christmas hols, mainly.

As for the book itself ( Read more... )