Readers of this blog will know that my reading tastes are wide but when the chips are down – and, boy, have they been down this year – it’s to children’s books I return for comfort reading, those I read first as a child and some terrific ones published more recently of which this is my favourite.
I know I’m not the only one – the BBC adaptation of the Malory Towers series brightened many an early lockdown experience according to social media posts from girls’ school story fans of all ages, lots of whom declared their intention of rereading the originals. And there are Facebook pages dedicated to the Chalet School series and, more generally, Girls’ Own books.
I’m lucky in that, despite many house moves in my childhood and into my twenties, I have held on to all my books. If that’s not the case for you and you feel the urge for a nostalgic reading binge can I point you in the direction of Girls Gone By Publishing? They republish such stalwarts of mid-20th-century bookshelves as:
Their most recent non-fiction publication is a three-volume Encyclopaedia of Girls’ School Stories. Having signed up to get the GGBP newsletter I was aware the project was forthcoming. The publisher asked if anyone had copies of various girls’ annuals (which had school stories in them) as cover images of them were wanted to illustrate a particular section.
I told in this post of my large collection of annuals so I was delighted to be able to help with several of the wanted titles and to subsequently see them in Volume Two eg:
I had NO idea there were so many girls’ school stories – an absolutely staggering amount were published from the late 1800s with their heyday probably being in the 20s and 30s. There’s no way I could ever acquire or read even a fraction of them so it’s great to be able to read about them in the almost 700 pages of the Encyclopaedia which is a huge slice of social history and highly recommended.
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