Through a strange set of circumstances, today I found myself sitting in the sun on my garden seat reading The Manor House School by Angela Brazil. Her name came up on a Radio 4 discussion programme and I recalled reading her books as a schoolgirl though it was news to me that she was a ‘rebel and a mould-breaker’. Apparently before Angela’s time girls’ school stories featured characters of an exemplary nature, embodying all the feminine virtues and acting as shining role models to young girls (not teenagers, please note, we didn’t have those until the late fifties).
Miss Brazil portrayed girls with a bit more spirit, iconoclastic tomboys – no wonder they appealed to me. Curious to know the kind of thing I was reading in my youth, I ordered a copy on ebay. It’s a surprisingly good story, a suspenseful mystery which would have had me on the edge of my seat in the 1940’s, but still able to hold my interest even today.
Spurred on by this experience, I began wondering what I would think of some of the books I devoured as a young adult. My father put me to work in a library and this considerably broadened my reading as all kinds of books came into my hands across the counter and each of us had our own drawer into which we could slip anything that took our fancy.
Frances Parkinson Keyes and her tales of plantations and slavery in the Southern states of America is my next choice and I have just bought Steamboat Gothic for about two and sixpence old money!
Miss Brazil portrayed girls with a bit more spirit, iconoclastic tomboys – no wonder they appealed to me. Curious to know the kind of thing I was reading in my youth, I ordered a copy on ebay. It’s a surprisingly good story, a suspenseful mystery which would have had me on the edge of my seat in the 1940’s, but still able to hold my interest even today.
Spurred on by this experience, I began wondering what I would think of some of the books I devoured as a young adult. My father put me to work in a library and this considerably broadened my reading as all kinds of books came into my hands across the counter and each of us had our own drawer into which we could slip anything that took our fancy.
Frances Parkinson Keyes and her tales of plantations and slavery in the Southern states of America is my next choice and I have just bought Steamboat Gothic for about two and sixpence old money!
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