My Childhood Favourites
'The Chalet School' series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
I'm a big fan of school stories and the Chalet School Series and 'The Silent Three' (about which there is a dearth of information) are my two outstanding favourites. The Chalet School ran to over 60 books with the setting for the school starting in Austria, removing to Guernsey and the Welsh mountains on the UK mainland (during the war years and immediately after) and finally relocating, as all good finishing schools do, to Switzerland. As a child I had the full set of books in hardback which were then passed down to younger family members and most likely lost, destroyed or sold on ebay. I resurrected a collection in paperback but they were terribly abridged and some of the titles had changed and in some cases the books were divided and given completely unrelated titles caused confusion. The series has been saved by dedicated fans who own their own publishing house Girls Gone By and they now have the rights to the Chalet School and many other popular series and are reprinting them in the original (or as close as possible to the original) versions. The added bonus is that they are using the original first edition covers designed at the time of publication, so the first few are beautifully '30s in their style. However, my overall favourite comes from the forties 'Lavender Laughs at the Chalet School' (renamed 'Lavender Leigh' in the paperback format). An added bonus is that over the years, dedicated fans have also written 'in-fills' to supplement the gaps that were left by EBD and in most cases they make excellent reading and complement, but do not have the magic of, the originals.
First Edition 'The School at the Chalet'
I was lucky enough to have found a first edition with all its 5 plates in tact and have reproduced them below. The dustjacket was missing, but the front of the book was beautifully tooled and did not miss the paper cover. I sold the book on as although I realised its worth, I would not have appreciated it whereas someone else did. I have other books that I cherish more in their original states although one edition I have is a 5th but you wouldn't know the difference unless you were an expert!
There was a second printing of the first edition but the weave is grey as opposed to the 'brown' hue shown here which is the only way they can be told apart as the second printing also has five plates. All subsequent printings only kept the frontispiece.
The illustrations are by Nina K Brisley and are absolutely delightful.
The narrative reads "Then Joey, feeling her way carefully, was beside her" page 296
Frontispiece as above / "She reduced the man to a horrified silence" page 49
"There, in a little heap, lay Simone" page 108 / "Looking curiously lifelike in the half-light" page 252
'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett
l to r the original 1st Edition version of the book. embossed hardback - image sourced from jonkers.co.uk | facsimile dustjacket image sourced from the sale-room.com
Published by William Heinemann, London, 1911 - Burnett began work on this novel in 1909 while laying out a garden for a new home she was building in Long Island, New York. While she wrote quite a number of books over the course of her career, this is her most enduring work, serving as the basis for several films in 1949,1993 and 2020 and several television adaptations in serial format. Sources : abebooks and my own personal knowledge.
This book cover is the version I currently posses, in all honesty I cannot actually remember the version I had as a child or whether it was only a borrowed one from school or the library, either way I always loved the story whichever covers it was in between. What I do remember with great clarity, however is the 1949 version of the film starring Margaret O'Brien. Using the same tactic as Eisenstein's 'Ivan the Terrible', during the scenes when the erotic pace of the dance reaches its peak, the black and white screening erupted into colour, so in 'The Secret Garden' as Mary enters the garden and sees it in full bloom for the first time the screen similarly erupts into a myriad rainbow of colour. In this case the effect is magical and left a lasting impression on me. As to the book itself, it is a long time since I read it, but I do remember being fascinated by the thought of a secret garden. Secret anything really, I loved the adventures of the 'Secret Seven' and slavishly followed the adventures of 'The Silent Three' who were of course a secret society in a boarding school. Boarding schools are my weakness as well, but this book features a lonely figure eventually befriended by the head gardener of the household and the rough and tumble younger brother of her personal maid. In time she discovers the house 'secret' never mind the garden, her cousin, her uncle's son who for some reason is secreted away in a distant wing of the great house she has come to live in and considers himself at death's door. Practical Mary has no time for what she sees as a hypochondriac even though neither she nor any other youngster involved in reading the book would even know the term! Of course in due time Mary and her companion Dickon cajole her hapless cousin Colin into joining in with their outdoor pursuits including the garden and its many secrets. In the garden, Colin gathers the strength of mind and body to learn to walk again, Mary under the gentle and natural tutelage of the gardener Ben and companion Dickon also finds her own inner beauty and compassion and emerges, rather like the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. A rite of passage or a pastoral tale of self-healing? Either will do and written in such a gentle manner it entices the reader in the best of both worlds. Written and published between 1909-11 this is a story that might be missed by current generations unless there are copies in their parents possession, it would be a shame if this book ever went out of fashion!
'The Secret Seven' by Enid Blyton
Images sourced from the Enid Blyton Society with thanks for the fond memories
Enid Blyton, a pariah for so long, why I wonder, no I don't I know perfectly well, political correctness 'did' for her didn't it? Just as it did to one of Agatha Christie's greatest book titles and which was inextricably linked to the content of the book!
However, in this instance I digress - I remember well my passion for and the number of times I re-read the 'Secret Seven' in the formats shown above, to such a degree that the dustjackets were decimated and in one sweep, my mother, irritated by the tatty covers destroyed them all and my sister's set of 'Mallory Towers' (which I had not at that stage migrated to!) So I do remember the fresh looking blue hardback covers as shown above, the only problem was that they were all identical so I had to be careful I was reading them in the correct order! I do remember the dustjackets as they actually told you which instalment of the adventures you were at on the spine and I definitely remember 'Good Work Secret Seven' which is why I chose this particular dustjacket. I liked the idea that the 7 were a team and didn't have any animal mascots to make up the numbers (I didn't know about pets as I was growing up and was frankly scared of large dogs, although I enjoyed playing with the more genteel kittens at no. 9 - we lived at no. 3). It also made up for not having a brother as our generation was brought up in a coeducational mix both in school (before I went to the elevated ranks of the girls only school at the age of 11), at Polish School (Saturdays) up to Further Education and at Scouts and Guides (as Brownies we were girls only - I think PC has done for 'Brownies' as well!) I decided to look up what current Brownies are called and discovered that yes, they still exist, entering a portal as Brownie Girl Scouts prior to becoming Girl Scouts, which used to be 'Girl Guides'. But this was a new piece of information for me : Their name comes from the story "The Brownies" by Juliana Horatia Ewing, written in 1870. As Polish Brownies we were known as 'Zuchy' so there's no conflict here .... Anyway, the books were a good mix of childhood development and some pretty logical thinking from, as far as I remember, all of them not just the boys although they outnumbered the girls 4:3. Many years later I bought the paperbacks and to my astonishment realised there were many more than just the original set that I had owned.
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