School Stories

English school stories developed as a genre of fiction centred on the boarding school life of British boys. Although there had been earlier authors writing school stories the genre blossomed with the publication of Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's schooldays in 1857. The stories depicted the social life and educational experiences of the children of the well-connected ruling class, who could afford the prestigious private schools which offered the surety of successful academic and professional careers for their children.

School stories were originally specific to boys, until an increase in female education in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century saw the creation of school stories for girls. Each category was specific to its gender, until the rise of the comprehensive or integrated public school created a new class of school story altogether.

The stories followed a formula or addressed expected themes of loyalty, self-sacrifice, enduring friendship, sporting trials and achievements, bravery, bullying and even romance, from the viewpoint of an individual or a group of students. School stories were read by boarding school students as well as those from 'comprehensive' (public) school environments who may have whimsically imagined themselves as part of this culture, despite the fact that the reality of such schools was sometimes vastly different from the stories.

Gender-based school stories declined in popularity after World War Two when coeducation became part of the burgeoning state school system in Britain and educators, academics and the Feminist movement began to view the genre as outmoded and unhelpful to modern education. However, today these stories are being reviewed as having created an important cultural space, language and identity for girls, who had usually been groomed to be wives and mothers, in a male-dominated society.

As society changed the genre reinvented itself with new formats such as comic books, popular films and television programs for young people. Heartbreak High (1994 - 1999) was an Australian television series based around a school in a 'tough' Sydney area. It explored gritty, culturally diverse public school characters facing modern concerns of drug use, sexual identity and racial tensions.

Angela Brazil (1868 - 1947)

Angela Brazil was one of the first authors to write girls' school stories. Her stories are conspicuous in their representation of lively, energetic characters, in contrast to the more genteel behaviours described by other authors in the genre. Her long sequence of schoolgirl novels began in 1907 with her second book The fortunes of Philippa. Her last publication was The school on the loch (1946).

Brazil's books were enormously popular with pre-pubescent (now 'tween') girls, using a formula of repetitive plots (the solving of a mystery or finding lost items) and a 'secret' language. Perhaps readers sought this kind of familiarity and security in very uncertain times, as Brazil's writings spanned the two World Wars, during which time she published nearly 50 schoolgirl novels. Some of the stories featured very close relationships between the girls.

Sims and Clare (p 67) maintain that Brazil's success endured as she always retained the viewpoint (and learning level) of the pre-adolescent girl in her stories, plus a penchant for the minutiae of school life.

Elinor Brent-Dyer (1894 - 1969)

Elinor Brent-Dyer is best known for her Chalet School Series although she published a hundred books of many different kinds of stories. Biographers note with interest that Brent-Dyer's own home circumstances of family breakdown were very different to her fictional heroines (Sims and Clare, p 73-74) although she attended a small private school and went on to teach, opening her own school for girls in 1938 (The Margaret Roper School) which she ran for 10 years. Brent-Dyer drew on her experiences of a holiday in Austria for her Chalet School series, the first of which was published in 1925 (The School at the Chalet). Later the locations changed as the rise of the Nazi Party rendered certain places untenable for such stories. A common theme of the stories is the arrival of a troubled student, who through peer support and teacher guidance, finds a better way to conduct herself.

The Chalet School series is the longest-running series of girls' stories ever published, with almost sixty novels released between 1925 - 1970. The series remains popular with collectors and attracts a worldwide following of enthusiasts, such as the Friends of the Chalet School club (see weblink below).

Elsie Jeanette (Dunkerley) Oxenham (1880 - 1960)

Oxenham (a pseudonym) published 38 books between 1914 and 1959 in the Abbey Girls series, for which she is best known. This series chronicled the experiences of the main characters from their mid-teens into their adult lives, until their daughters in turn reach a similar age and attend the same school. This exploration of growing up and the next generation set her apart in the school stories genre.

Oxenham's stories included themes of fiscal snobbery (which were sometimes solved by the introduction of an unexpected inheritance), moral dilemmas, religious issues, and unusually, a boy attending a school for girls (Rosaly's new school) and vice versa.

Oxenham wrote several other series which tie in with the main Abbey Series; these are known by students of the genre as 'Abbey Connectors' (Camp Keema, Kenisbury, Rocklands series etc). Characters and storylines were so developed as to provide opportunities for further stories. This was considered overworked by some (Sims and Clare, p 258 - 259) but after all this is fiction, and writing was Oxenham's source of income.

Oxenham's books are widely collected and there are several active appreciation societies (see weblinks below) of her work.

Many of the titles by these three authors are available to read online at Project Gutenburg.

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