Girls Gone By

 

 

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:

 

Mabel Esther Allan

Elinor Brent-Dyer

Gwendoline Courtney

Monica Edwards

Josephine Elder

Antonia Forest

Elizabeth Goudge

Lorna Hill

Malcolm Saville

Jane Shaw

 

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.

Six in August

I read six books in August.

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid

My sister passed this on to me. 'There were a lot of things that ran in families, but murder wasn't one of them . . . When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test could be the key to unlocking the mystery of a twenty-year-old murder inquiry’. I’m not sure how I’ve managed to miss the first three books featuring Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie investigating cold cases (a la one of my favourite TV programmes New Tricks) but I will catch up asap. Fab.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon

I got a lovely hardback copy of this in the Christian Aid book sale last year. The era appealed to me – the hot summer and drought of 1976 which I remember very well. I chose that year to move from Scotland … to St Albans (and thence to London the following year). My abiding memory of my first summer south of the border is of parched yellow grass in the park where I went in vain to get some fresh air after work. I did write a poem about that; wish I’d thought of writing a novel. Maggie O’Farrell also used this time for her Instructions for a Heatwave.

This is a cleverly constructed story of neighbours and the secrets behind closed doors. A woman from their street goes missing and 10-year-old Gracie and her loyal sidekick, Tilly, investigate (and search for God at the same time). I loved both girls: Gracie, a worthy successor to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird (and the book does have its own Boo Radley pariah figure), and physically frail little Tilly – ‘She’d taken the bobbles out of her hair, but it stayed in exactly the same position as if they were still there.’ – can’t you just see her?

Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers

Bought in a charity shop – and what a discovery! I loved this story of two widowed, childless sisters (elderly but prefer to think of themselves as being in late middle-age …) who have been living together for the last six years. They reminded me a bit of Harriet and Belinda from Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle (one of my top ten books of all time, so I don’t say it lightly). But this Harriet and her sister face 21st-century dilemmas when they give sanctuary to a mysterious young woman from Belarus and her baby, and a cousin’s moody teenage son also lands himself upon their hospitality.

Rainy Day Sisters by Kate Hewitt.

Another sister novel – or half-sisters actually. I was delighted to win this in a giveaway by the author – I have read several of her books, particularly enjoying the Falling for the Freemans series (and The Vicar’s Wife under the name of Katharine Swartz). This is in her series Hartley-by-the-Sea – a village in a relatively untouristy part of the Lake District. Lucy has been living in Boston but when her life goes awry (thanks in no small measure to her own mother) she accepts an invitation from the older half-sister she barely knows, Juliet, who runs a B&B in Hartley-by-the-Sea. Juliet has her own problems (again, mostly to do with their mutual mother) and it takes various events, some involving other villagers, and revelations for the sisters to begin to understand and to love each other.

The Meryl Streep Movie Club by Mia March

Lent by a friend. The setting is the Three Captains’ Inn, Maine, New England. Lolly Weller, the inn’s owner, summons home her daughter Kat along with the two nieces she brought up, Isabel and June, telling them she has an announcement to make. As the weeks go by the problems each of the four women have are revealed and discussed in the context of whatever Meryl Street film they’ve just watched. I thought the ending was a bit rushed and I didn’t find all the relationships convincing (eg Kat’s with her childhood sweetheart – he seemed kind of creepy to me) but as a Meryl fan I found this an enjoyable read.

Chin Up Chest Out Jemina! A Celebrationof the Schoolgirls’ Story by Mary Cadogan

A Christian Aid Booksale purchase. I have blogged about my collection of girls’ annuals and I’m also a fan of the Chalet School and Abbey Girls series of books, and of Angela Brazil, so I was thrilled – Jubilate! – to find this celebration of schoolgirl stories brought out by Girls Gone By Publishers. It has extracts, stories, illustrations, and articles (one by actor Terence Stamp, whose first adolescent crush, would you believe, was on ‘Dimsie’, the chestnut-curled and leggy heroine of a series of books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce).

Some adverts from girls’ magazines are reproduced. Cricket bats feature in these – and typewriters: ‘Yes, Mary is quite the envy of her friends now her father has bought her a Bar-Let Portable.’ Those were the days.

Jolly good books

I have collected girls’ annuals for many years now, having never forgotten the excitement on Christmas morning of feeling the familiar shape of a parcel, knowing it would be a Judy or Bunty or June or Princess annual. I’d have it read before breakfast. Then I’d read my sister’s.

Now I have around 350 annuals, bought in second-hand bookshops and jumble sales, spanning a hundred years of girlhood. Thanks to Mr Handyman putting up lots of new shelves last week I now have the whole collection together and can display some of the lovely covers face out. The names are as brilliant as the pictures: Topping Book for Girls, Girls’ Golden Annual, Girls’ Merry Book, Jolly Days for Girls, Our Girls’ Tip Top, Splendid Book for Girls, Stirring Stories for Girls. I feel merry and jolly just looking at them.

Some are stand-alone and some are allied to weekly magazines – I love the Girls’ Crystal and Schoolfriend annuals.

 

But closest to my heart, the one I’d rescue if the house were on fire, is Princess Gift Book for Girls 1965,  falling apart because it was so pored over when I was the age in this picture.

Sadly, in the 1990s, when I had a daughter to buy magazines and annuals for, even those stalwarts Judy and Bunty were no more and what had replaced them were product/character-related publications none of which were topping or merry or jolly or stirring at all, just crassly commercial. The stories were banal and unambitious, apparently assuming that every little girl wanted to wear a pink dress and a sparkly plastic tiara and aspire to marry a Hollywood prince. And when girls were too old for the plastic tiara, the magazines/annuals were all about relationships, celebrities and worrying about your appearance.

Compare that narrow view of what life has to offer with Princess Gift Book for Girls 1965. Along with ‘Stories of Horses, of Islands, of Mystery, of the Circus’, there’s ‘The Tale of the Jackdaw of Rheims (in verse)’, ‘The History of the Fragrant Rose’, ‘How we made a film’, ‘Wendy’s year – full of things to make and do’ and much more.

However that varied list of contents pales into complete insignificance compared to The Girls’ Own Annual, Volume Fifty-Nine, edited by Gladys M. Spratt and weighing in at a whopping 620 pages. There isn’t a publishing date but the first item is ‘Earl Baldwin’s Call to Youth … delivered by the ex-Premier to ten thousand young men and women … at the great Empire Rally of Youth … May 1937’.

The contents list runs to three large pages in tiny type – dozens of stories and articles. Thinking about your appearance is catered for –  eg ‘Hair, Take Care of Your’ and ‘Keep Fit’ (by Dr Victoria E. M. Bennett, M.B., B.S. (Lond.), D.P.H. (Cantab.) no less).

But other articles include: ‘Try four-handed chess’; ‘How to form a harmonica band’; ‘Alpine sporting’ ‘Careers: Dental mechanics, What about science?, Why not try Massage, Medical gymnastics, Electricity, Flying as a career for Girls … ’; and so on and so on … and on.

It’s easy to mock its earnestness (and even after reading the careers advice I’ve no idea what medical gymnastics are) but here, thirty years before a bra was burnt, the focus was on what a girl could do and be.

The real world had its barriers but in the world of Girls’ Own Annual girls could do and be anything they chose.

And that sounds jolly good to me.