Happy Friday everyone. If all goes to plan I should be on my way to Book Con at the moment, so in honour of a long weekend of bookish delights focused on literature for school girls in the twentieth century I’ve got a Girl’s Own boarding school series for you this week.
Dimsie is Daphne Isobel Maitland and she is the heroine of nine stories – seven set at her school, The Jane Willard Foundation, and two at her family home. As you can see from the photo I’ve read six of the and the missing ones are on my purchase list for conference this weekend. The name Dimsie comes from her initials D I M in case you hadn’t realised and the books follow her from her first year at the school all the way through to her final year as Head Girl. There were originally seven books in the series, but the final two were written in response to reader requests and the final one is actual set during World War Two when Dimsie is married. They were published across a 20 year period starting in 1921, and as was often the case with school series in this era there were also short stories published in various annuals.
Dorita Fairlie Bruce is one of the names when it comes to Girl’s Own boarding school books for girls along with Angela Brazil, Elinor M Brent Dyer (Chalet School), Elsie Oxenham (the Abbey books) and depending on your point of view Enid Blyton. The Chalet School will always be my favourite (and in writing this I’ve astonishingly realised that I’ve never written a proper series post about them so I must rectify that at some point) because those are the ones that were still in print when I was little and so were the ones I could get hold of from the library or buy for myself (see also Drina and Sadlers Wells) but DFB is my favourite of the ohers, all of which I first read as an adult, which is obviously a different experience to when you’re seven or eight and you first come across the idea of a boarding school.
I wrote about Dimsie, Head Girl back when I first read that and it’s fair to say that Dimsie is, like many other a boarding school heroine, a girl that somehow manages to get away with things that others wouldn’t for: Reasons. Dimsie is able to talk to prefects on their level when she’s a junior and have conversations with teachers (and the head!) that others wouldn’t be able to get away with. And yet you still like her. She’s a good friend, she’s not annoyingly smart or talented, and she cares about people. The thing you will have heard of from Dimsie (if you have heard of anything that is) is the Anti-Soppists League – which is Dimsie and her friends in league to not to go soppy over senior pupils or teachers or anyone. And the books follow the usual rules of boarding school – inter pupil drama, trouble with the juniors, trouble with a pupil who isn’t quite undertanding the rules of the school or is out for herself not the group, sports rivalries and illnesses, with the odd exceptional event thrown in – which are where they can be a bit bonkers. The Chalet School has handy mountains and lakes (and Nazis) to provide opportunities for drama, but being set in Britain, DFB has had to come up with her own ideas – which include stolen old masters and secret passages.
As ever there are some old fashioned stereotypes and language that isn’t acceptable today in here which means that I won’t be lending them to the young readers in my life, but they’re also unintentionally hilarious at times and I find them really really readable. This is another day when its not so much a suggestion to read if you’re not already interested in this sort of book, but if you are you really should try one. They’re miles better (to my mind) than Elsie Oxenham! Fingers crossed that I can lay my hands on the missing ones in the book sale.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 