Update: School stories (more or less)

My favorite cover from this batch; great use
of color and just a tad surreal?

While I'm still absorbed by all the loot from my recent bookshopping, it's time to get back to the Overwhelming List.  I do still have one more update pending on mystery and romance authors, but decided I'd take a break from that.  After finalizing my recent series of four updates on children’s authors, I realized I had already come across enough additional writers for yet another couple of updates.  Some of the new additions specialized in school stories and others didn’t, and since they divided roughly into two halves I decided to split them up that way.  So, coming up soon will be an update on more general children’s authors, but in the meantime here are 15 more writers who all published—or seem to have published, in the case of one or two about which information is sparse—school stories, and of course a bunch of cover images as well, which are as seductive as ever.  (And by the way, the next edition of the list will contain a whole slew of additional girls' school authors, courtesy of The Book.)

I should acknowledge that at least a couple of these were suggested to me by Tina, who has given me lots of other useful suggestions already.  One of those was VIOLET M. METHLEY, who published children’s fiction as well as novels for adults, both of which seem potentially of interest.  AGNES MIALL, who wrote The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Everything (1916), reprinted in 2008, may also have written for adults as well as children, but she is still a bit shrouded in the fog of time.

Jacket blurb for Mabel Tyrrell's The Enchanted Camp

MABEL L. TYRRELL definitely wrote for adults as well as children.  She was the author of Give Me a Torch, one of the titles I passed up on my post-Christmas shopping spree at Russell Books in Victoria, Canada.  I haven’t learned enough about her yet to know if I should regret that decision or not, but for now some of her school stories, such as Miss Pike and Her Pupils (1928), seem just as intriguing.

A stray Kathleen Millar Macleod title

I’m always a sucker for World War II-era fiction, and so OLIVE DOUGAN’s wartime girls’ school stories, such as The Schoolgirl Refugee (1940), Schoolgirls in Peril (1944), sound seductive.  But—like so many lesser-known school stories and so much wartime fiction—it looks like tracking down copies will be an adventure in itself.

At least three of the writers in this update—KATHLEEN MILLAR MACLEOD, J. P. MILNE, and ELIZABETH FRANCES MEDLICOTT SMITH—wrote boys’ school stories as well as girls’.  I wonder (but don’t have time to research at the moment) if boys’ school stories were as popular and prolific as those for girls?  I haven’t come across all that many, but that may be simply because, for the most part, male writers wrote boys’ school stories and women wrote girl’s school stories.  At any rate, a bit of dabbling into a boys’ school story or two could, I suspect, be fun and interesting as a comparison.

Oh, to be a madcap someday...

And finally, all of my exploration into school stories has led me to one rather burning question.  What exactly, I wonder, constitutes a “madcap”?  In this update alone, we have MARJORIE BEVAN’s Madcaps of Manor School (1949), KATHARINE LOUISE OLDMEADOW’s Madcap Judy (1919), and SIBYL BERTHA OWSLEY’s A Madcap Brownie (1929).  And I’m pretty sure I could compile a substantial list from my previous updates.  It does give one pause.  Was there a particularly virulent strain of madcap mania among young girls in the early to mid-twentieth century?  And how, should I wish to do so, might I myself become a madcap?  Well, perhaps it’s just as well I don’t know…

The full list of new authors is below, and they have all already been added to the main list.  I hope you enjoy them!

MARJORIE BEVAN (1900-1966) (married name Bennetton)
	Author of children's fiction, particularly several girls' school novels of the 1920s to 1940s, including Five of the Fourth (1926), The Fifth at Foley's (1936), Mystery Term at Moorleigh (1937), The Luck of the Veritys (1938), Merely Belinda (1939), and Madcaps of Manor School (1949).
EDITH MARY DE FOUBERT (1873-1967)
	A lesser-known author of girl's school novels, de Foubert published around ten of them in the 1920s and 1930s, including That Term at the Towers (1927), The Fourth Form Mystery (1930), For the Sake of Shirley (1935), The Vac at St. Verda's (1938), and Sally's Sporting Chance (1938). Illustration from Edith de Foubert's Penny in Search of a School
OLIVE DOUGAN (1904-1963)
	Author of several girls' school novels, including some intriguing wartime titles; works include The Bendon Bequest (1934), The Schoolgirl Refugee (1940), Schoolgirls in Peril (1944), Princess Gwyn (1946), Nancy Finds Herself (1947), and The Forbidden Holiday (1948).
MARGARET HUNTER IRONSIDE (1884-1970)
	Author of six girls' school novels in the 1920s and 1930s, including The Girls of St. Augustine's (1920), The Mysterious Something (1925), The Black Sheep of St. Michael's (1928), Young Diana (1931), The Tale-Tellers' Club (1932), and Jane Emerges (1937). A great Kathleen Millar Macleod cover; Julia is so confident and perky she's walking right off of the cover!
KATHLEEN MILLAR MACLEOD (1892-1964)
	Children’s author who seems to have written both boys’ and girls’ school stories, as well as other family-oriented novels; titles include Grafton Days (1932), Father of Five: A Tale of Scottish Home Life (1935), Brothers at the Brae House (1936), and Dilys at Silverburn (1946). A somewhat disturbing Violet Methley cover?
VIOLET M[ARY]. METHLEY (dates unknown)
	Playwright, children's author and novelist; her children's books include girls' school stories like The Bunyip Patrol (1926) and The Girls at Sandilands (1934); novels for adults include The Loadstone (1914), The Husband-Woman (1926), and The Last Enemy (1936). And one that, should it ever be reprinted, will, I suspect, be retitled...
AGNES M[ACKENZIE]. MIALL (1892-1977)
	A prolific author on sewing and homemaking, as well as The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Everything (1916), reprinted in 2008, Miall also published novels for children and perhaps adults, including Sweet Wine of Youth (1939), The Schoolgirl Fugitives (1943), and The Holiday Camp Mystery (1950). Honestly, perhaps a new title here too?
J[ANE]. P[ATERSON]. MILNE (????-1976)
	Author of nine boys' and girls' school novels from the 1920s-1950s, including Mystery at Towerlands (1929), The Mysterious Term at Merlands (1937), The Boys of Moorfield School (1939), Harriet G. at St. Hilary's (1949), The Chums of Study Ten (1949), and The Mystery of Gaily More (1955).
KATHARINE LOUISE OLDMEADOW (1878-1963) (aka Pamela Grant)
	Author of girls' school stories and other girls' fiction from the 1910s to 1950s; titles include Madcap Judy (1919), Princess Charming (1923), The Pimpernel Patrol (1927), Cheery Chums (1930), Schooldays of Prunella (1932), The Three Mary Anns (1948), and Under the Mountain (1952).
SIBYL BERTHA OWSLEY (1883-1968)
	Author of numerous school novels for both boys and girls, including Eardley House (1912), Skimpy and the Saint (1923), The Upper Third Twins (1926), Dulcie Captains the School (1928), A Madcap Brownie (1929), The School Knight-Errant (1934), and The Guides of North Cliff (1944). Sally looks a bit like a possessed doll, doesn't she?
IERNE LIFFORD PLUNKET (1885-1970)
	Historian, playwright, and author of girls' school and other children's fiction, including Sally Cocksure (1925), Joanna of Little Meadow (1926), The Dare Club (1931), The Dadlingford Mystery (1936), The Secret of High Marley Wood (1936), and The Mystery of the Tor (1943).
EVELYN SIMMS (1883-1968)
	Poet and author of at least four girls' school novels—Her Freshman Year: An American Story for Girls (1924), Stella Wins the School (1929), The School on Castle Hill (1935), and Mystery at Rossdale School (1937).
ELIZABETH FRANCES MEDLICOTT SMITH (1900-1970)
	Author of three children’s books—The Discovery of Mr. Nobody (1957), The Hidden Way (1961), and Roger at Ravenscrag (1968)—the last of which, at least, is set in a boys’ school. One of Irene Swatridge's alter-egos; ah, the "swirling mists"; what is it about isolated houses that makes mist behave thus?
IRENE MAUDE SWATRIDGE (1904-1988) (née Mossop, aka Irene Mossop, aka Fay Chandos, aka Theresa Charles, aka Leslie Lance, aka Jan Tempest, aka Virginia Storm)
	Prolific romance author under several pseudonyms—titles such as Gay Knight I Love (1938) and Hibiscus House (1955)—and about 15 girls’ school novels as Irene Mossop, such as Well Played (1928), Feud in the Fifth (1933), The Taming of Pickles (1933), and Gay Adventure (1937).
MABEL L[OUISE]. TYRRELL (1884-1962)
	Playwright, children's author, and novelist; starting with children's works such as Victoria's First Term (1925) and Miss Pike and Her Pupils (1928), Tyrrell later wrote at least 18 novels, including The Mushroom Field (1931), Pull the House Down (1938), and Give Me a Torch (1951).