Dimsie Moves Up Again

Dimsie Moves Up Again: Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1922)

'Well,' said Rosamund, doubtfully, 'we always have set our faces against the persecution of new girls, even if they're senior to ourselves.'

'Humpf!' said Jean Gordon. 'I've come gradually to the conclusion that the persecution never occurs unless it's deserved, and it usually does a lot of good in the end."

'Oh, but Jean!' objected Dimsie, 'it all depends on the reason. A girl shouldn't be ragged or snubbed because she's different from everybody else, and doesn't know any better.'

'She's come to school to learn,' returned Jean, conclusively.

Finding a new school story at a charity shop is always a little like winning the lottery for me. A recent trip came back with two new prizes, Dimsie Moves Up Again and Celia Wins.
Dimsie Moves Up Again is only new in a certain sense. I have foggy childhood memories of this one that became more clear as I read. One thing that remained intact from being a little girl: the impression that the Headmistress of the Jane Willard Foundation is an absolute monster. But more on that later.
DFB is one of my favourite school story authors, and she is reliably excellent when it comes to serious examinarions of school politics and loads of girls with boyish nicknames, two of my favourite things.
Her Dimsie series is notorious for being about the Anti Soppist League, the existence of which gives the impression that Jane's is a hothouse of lesbian desire that needs to be continually repressed, much like, I suppose, Fernleigh Manor. This gains added hilarity by Dimsie expressing the need to be down on soppiness while sitting with her head on the beautiful Rosamund's lap, for example, and the tendency of her girls to act like walking together to church is a date or a ball dance ("Are you already engaged elsewhere?") or to make exceptions when it's perfectly acceptable to kiss.
This is a little unfair, of course. The "soppy" behaviour Dimsie and her friends are determined to stamp out is more widely expressed as false emotion, airs and graces, and sentimentality of all kinds, including the "wrong" kind of bullying, i.e. that not intended to knock someone's corners off and force her to act like all the conventional girls she's with. (See the quote above about the unfortunate Fenella Postlethwaite in this book.) Sentimentality, effusive affection and other vaguely sapphic behaviour is simply a subset of "soppiness" that the girls will eventually grow out of anyway.
Never mind. In a universe in which Dimsie Grows Up never existed, I'm sure Dimsie and Rosamund, who is stated to be able to "get more out of Dimsie" than anyone else if she wants to, are together forever.
Back to the monstrosity of Miss Yorke, Jane's headmistress.
Tony, a senior girl who is immediately likeable because of her nickname, is a shoe-in to be voted Head Girl, which is done on democratic lines. Tony is a "thoroughly straight, good-all-round sort of girl" and has "the qualities that would make a capital Head Girl". She's adorable. The only other possibility is the wishy-washy, sensitive, musical Ursula Grey (let's take a moment to admire DFB's character naming, which is always perfect) who is not as popular, but is Dimsie's protegee. Yes, Dimsie has protegees who are older than her. She's annoying that way. Dimsie starts going around making girls promise to vote for Ursula.
So Miss Yorke calls in Tony, tells her that she doesn't have the right to order this, only request it, but Tony is not to stand for Head Girl. For the Sake of the School. Because, um... She has too many irons in the fire and lacks concentration.

'It is a great pity, Tony. I wish with all my heart I could let the election take its course, but it wouldn't be safe, so--' she paused, and looked at the tall straight girl before her with a little sigh '--so I must appeal to a principle which I know is strong in all you girls who have been long at the school. Will you think first of what is best for Jane's, Tony?'

My outrage, it still burns.
There is of course, other stuff going on. Ursula must be allowed to learn to play the cello instead of the piano (I would care more if not for my burning loyalty to Tony), people think terrible shabby things of Dimsie because of a purely altruistic attempt to delay another girl getting her hockey colours, some younger girls are wicked low-down rulebreakers. It's all quite glorious. Five stars.
But I shall leave you with another classic moment:

'Thanks, awfully, for the flowers, Dimsie dear. I shall play all the better because you gave them to me.'
'I'm not sure,' said Dimsie, doubtfully, as she followed her down, 'whether that's a speech that should be listened to by a conscientous Anti-Soppist--but never mind!"

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Elves and Escapades out--Fairies and Felicitations free!

I am excited to announce that Elves and Escapades, the sequel to Pegasi and Prefects, has been released today. (On my birthday!)

It feels like it's been forever since Pegasi and Prefects came out, but actually, it's been about three months. :)

To celebrate, the stand-alone prequel novelette Fairies and Felicitations is free for five days.

Fairies and Felicitations Out Now! And a word on Amazon categories.

Fairies and Felicitations, the next Scholars & Sorcery book--or rather, a standalone prequel in the universe-- is now live! 99 cents on Amazon, and available for Kindle Unlimited.

Anne has always thought of herself as middling. Middling looks, middling position in the form, middling magical Gift and just a middling curve to the tip of her ears. 

Her best friend, Lady Emmeline Eversleigh, commonly known as Kitty, is not middling anything. And when Kitty drags Anne into playing a Saint Valentine's Day prank of truly wicked--and magical--proportions on one of the prefects, Anne finds herself in more than a middling muddle of trouble. 

A stand alone novelette of 10,000 words in the Sorcery and Scholars series.

Interestingly enough, one of the categories Amazon filed it under (presumably picking up on some of my keywords) was  Growing Up & Facts of Life > Friendship, Social Skills & School Life > Girls & Women

I had a moment of worrying that I had accidentally categorised it as non-fiction, but on checking, the first book in the category is a Frozen Little Golden Book and it does seem to be a fiction category. When I think about it, it's quite suitable, given Anne's particular dilemma.

Now I have some websites to update!

Girl's Own School Stories on Amazon

An American reader of Pegasi and Prefects just asked me for recommendations for school stories. At first I didn't know what to suggest: my own collection has for years existed of books inherited from my mother and aunts and random volumes found at antiquarians and charity shops, always choosing the cheap foxed ones over the valuable editions. I ended up with everything from St Trinian's to evangelical school stories, and a lot of annuals and collections. Some of them had never been read, with pages still uncut: from the inscriptions, unloved birthday presents and Sunday School prizes.

That works in Australia and the UK, my two homes, but I wasn't sure if British school stories ever caught on much in the home of Nancy Drew and the Little House.

However, I checked Amazon, and I was in for a wonderful surprise. Since I last checked, there has been... well, let's say I might be broke for a little while. Plenty of free reading too, though!

I already knew that a lot of Angela Brazils were available on Kindle and Project Gutenberg; I have been gradually giving away my hardbacks and replacing them with free digital editions (unless I really, really like the covers.) Brazil is always a good choice. In a lot of ways she is the quintessential school story writer. In practice, her books range from brilliant to phoned in, but she formed the tropes of the slangy, less than perfect schoolgirl, and her heavily flawed heroines are some of my all time favourites.

A Fourth Form Friendship is the very best, and will be reviewed here properly at some point. Other Angela Brazil (free!) recommendations, all stand-alone novels:

The Luckiest Girl in the School
The Girls of St Cyprians
A Popular Schoolgirl
The Youngest Girl in the Fifth

If Brazil formed the tropes, though, Enid Blyton distilled them into some of the purest forms, as was her genius. Malory Towers, St Clare's and the Naughtiest Girl books (younger children, and co-ed, at a progressive child-centred school) are all available as inexpensive ebooks these days. There are also much more recently written tie-in novels, of which I will cautiously say some are very enjoyable, some less so. (I vehemently object to the renumbering of the series to include the tie-ins, though, and I can remember how cheated I felt as a kid when my new Famous Five book turned out not to be by Blyton at all.)

There are also some Chalet School books up as ebooks  from Bettany Press and Girls Gone By but, disappointingly, the ones actually written by Elinor Brent-Dyer aren't up there, just novel length fanfic. If you are a hardcore fan, though, they might be fun, if IMO over priced. The price factor is why I can't recommend any by experience, as it happens. There is also an unrelated book by Brent-Dyer called The School by the Sea, which I haven't read, but seem to have purchased at some point.

What is annoying is that some Chalet School books (and other books by school story authors) are reprinted by specialist publishers, but they don't make them available as ebooks rather than as limited print runs.  Seriously, on the tiny chance that anyone from Girls Gone By etc is reading this, please let me throw my money at you. There's no way on earth that I'm going to spend A$55 on an airmail copy of a Lightning Source reprint, but price them all at $4.99 as ebooks and I will have spent hundreds of dollars with you before I even realise what I've done. Okay, rant over.

Anne Digby's Trebizon series is also up as ebooks. They never really caught my attention, being too late for me (starting in the late 1970s), but they are so inexpensive I may well give them another shot. She also wrote the Naughtiest Girl fill-ins, which admittedly I don't like much.

The best news (for me, at least) I've saved for last: classic school stories by Evelyn Smith, Dorothea Moore, E. M. Channon and Bessie Marchant, put out by a company called Books to Treasure. THIS is why I may be pinching pennies for a bit. Of that list,  Dorothea Moore and Evelyn Smith are two of my favourite, most solid school story writers ever, reliably fun, and E. M. Channon wrote one of the best (and most unusual) school stories I have ever read, The Honour of the House.  (Not on Kindle yet, but I can hope, and I will review at some point!)

Bessie Marchant I am less sure about; she sounds familiar, but I would have to dig around the boxes in my garage to see if I can fit some books to the name.

Anyway, Smith, Channon and Moore are enthusiastically recommended, and I have some reading to do!

If you have any other recommendations of school stories readily available, please let me know. Top of my wish list is for some of Dorita Fairlie Bruce's non-Dimsie books... I live in hope!

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Eleanor Beresford is the author of the Scholars and Sorcery series of LGBT YA fantasy novels. Find out more here.