School Stories

We've got several fans here of The Chalet School books, and gmathis just mentioned To Serve Them All My Days, and now we're talking about Plumfield on a new topic about the Little Women books.

Makes me want to pull all tattered school stories together her.

Daddy Long-Legs

The Spirit of the School

I acquired some lovely Angela Brazil's earlier this month: The secret of the border castle and Leader of the lower school, both with nice dust jackets.

Just read Angela Brazil's wkipedia page and found it terribly interesting.

Evelyn Smith. I have:
Val Forrest in the Fifth
Seven Sisters at Queen Anne's
The first fifth form
Septima At School
The Small Sixth Form

3>, >4 2wonderY: I have her entire collection in ebook format. Haven't read any of them yet.

>5 MDGentleReader: Evelyn Smith is good! There is a third Queen Anne's book, Phyllida in form III; I hope you'll be able to find a copy to add to your collection.

Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings goes to school just sneaks into TBSL's purview, having been published in 1950. The first 23 volumes of the Jennings series were published between 1950 and 1977, plus two further volumes in 1991 and 1994.

I was a voracious reader as a child, but Jennings, plus Penguin Classics translations of the Icelandic sagas, are the only books I definitely remember reading. Strange child.

>8 Cynfelyn: the first 23 volumes??????? :faints:

>8 Cynfelyn:, >9 fuzzi:
One of the odder things I discovered when I first entered my library into LT was that Jennings (as "Stompa") was hugely popular in Norway at one time. It was made into a radio serial there in the 50s and 60s, apparently. It seems very strange to think of Norwegian kids identifying with the idea of an English prep school, but then again, the primary school I attended in England wasn't remotely like any that I'd come across in a a school story, either. (It was a 1960s structure in a Lancashire backstreet, put together out of glass, plywood and asbestos sheet, and liable to collapse if a small child was so careless as to lean against the walls...)

>2 2wonderY:, etc.
I've tried to read Angela Brazil a few times, but you have to pretend to be Joyce Grenfell to make it sound right, and that gets very tiring after a chapter or two...

Thanks >4 2wonderY: I too read that Wiki entry. It lead me to think about the Boy School stories. I remember reading and disliking Tom Browns School Days as a boy.
Later I read some Billy Bunter, not sure where? Possibly The Eagle or The Magnet some rich Englishman had donated to his poor 'colonial cousins kids'.

I think I like the idea of those stories more than the implementation , thus I did like Harry Potter cos of the 'English Boarding School' setting.
I never did work out the concept of Upper 5th vs. 5th say in schooling. Was there an Upper 6th? If not why not? And will Harry ever go to University? :-)

Well you have now tempted me enough to want to read some of the early (girls) boarding school novels eg. by Angela Brazil
a question is though, are they readable by an adult? I am thinking of Enid Blyton and her Mallory Towers series - which I have not read - which
was recommended by a friend. Which I suspect...

All your thoughts, ideas and suggestions are very welcome.

Guido.

ETA. Just noticed your reference in >10 thorold: Though who is Joyce Grenfell ?

>47
Guido,
Sorry, I think I've done this to you before, bringing in obscure British references... Joyce Grenfell was a British comedian/actress who died about thirty years ago. She was very good at sending up upper-middle-class British accents and attitudes, especially schoolteachers. Look her up on YouTube!

Upper/Lower Fifth etc. — I think this sort of thing goes back to the days when schools grouped pupils together according to their progress rather than their age, and they would end up with some groups that were bigger than others, especially at the top end of the school when pupils were preparing for exams. So those would be split into Upper and Lower. (In really pretentious schools designed by people who had read Tom Brown's Schooldays, there would also be classes with exotic names like "Shell" and "Remove".)
It has disappeared completely now: they start at Year One in primary school and just go on linearly. But when I was at school in the 60s and 70s, some sorts of school still thought it more stylish to make reference to the grand ways of public-school fiction. When I started at grammar school, the lowest class (which would now be Year 7 or something like that) was called the "2nd Form". Needless to say, there was no 1st Form. We moved on into the 3rd, 4th, Lower 5th, and Upper 5th, then we took our first lot of exams (aged 16) and could move on into the semi-adult world of the Lower 6th: no more uniform, you could wear any reasonably respectable suit or sports jacket with a school tie. Then the Upper 6th, then "A" levels and off to university, the dole office, or whatever.

>11 guido47: In my mind's eye Joyce Grenfell is forever the policewoman impersonating a teacher in the 1950s St Trinian's films. See the clip on YouTube. For St Trinian's, see Wikipedia.

And of course the books, mainly by Ronald Searle, ought to be included in this thread:
Hurrah for St Trinian's
The Female Approach
Back to the Slaughterhouse
The Terror of St Trinian's
Souls in Torment

Thanks >13 Cynfelyn: , now I see her. I own all the 50's St Trinian's films. Ronald Searle is of course a given :-)

This makes me more keen to read some of that old stuff.

If St Trinian's counts, so does Molesworth The Compleet Molesworth