Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and prior to his death was also known as Lady Antonia Pinter.
The Chalet School is a series of 58 school story novels by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, initially published between 1925 and 1970. The fictional school was initially located in the Austrian Tyrol, before it was moved to Guernsey in 1939 following the rise to power of the Nazi Party, and again to Herefordshire following the Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands. It later moved to a fictional island off the coast of Wales, and finally to Switzerland.
Antonia Forest was the pseudonym of Patricia Giulia Caulfield Kate Rubinstein, an English writer. She wrote 13 books for children, published between 1948 and 1982. Her 10 best-known works concern the doings of the fictional Marlow family. Forest also wrote two historical novels about the Marlows' Elizabethan ancestors.
Monica Edwards was an English children's writer of the mid-twentieth century best known for her Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm series of children's novels.
Margaret Biggs is a popular and collectible exponent of the girls' School story. She is best known for her Melling School series of books, first published by Blackie in the 1950s. The series is set at a weekly boarding school and is unusual in that it shows boarding school life and home life side by side. The interaction between girls and boys is also atypical of the genre at that time. The Melling series was republished by Girls Gone By Publishers in the 2000s and the reprints, whilst retaining the original text and artwork, have new introductions by Margaret Biggs, who is ‘taking great pleasure in the republication of her books’. Ms Biggs has also written two new volumes in the series, Kate at Melling, set twelve years after the earlier books, and Changes at Melling, which were published by Girls Gone By Publishers in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
The school story is a fiction genre centring on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, at its most popular in the first half of the twentieth century. While examples do exist in other countries, it is most commonly set in English boarding schools and mostly written in girls' and boys' subgenres, reflecting the single-sex education typical until the 1950s. It focuses largely on friendship, honour and loyalty between pupils. Plots involving sports events, bullies, secrets, rivalry and bravery are often used to shape the school story.
Angela Brazil was one of the first British writers of "modern schoolgirls' stories", written from the characters' point of view and intended primarily as entertainment rather than moral instruction. In the first half of the 20th century she published nearly 50 books of girls' fiction, the vast majority being boarding school stories. She also published numerous short stories in magazines.
The Abbey Series of British novels by Elsie J. Oxenham comprises 38 titles which were published between 1914 and 1959. The first title, Girls of the Hamlet Club set the scene for the school aspects of the series, but it is the second title, The Abbey Girls, that introduces The Abbey – almost a character within the series in its own right – a romantic ruin that inspires love for it as a quiet, peaceful place, and creates the wish to behave in the public-spirited tradition of the early Cistercian monks. These qualities go some way towards explaining the popularity of the series.
Dorita Fairlie Bruce was a Scottish children's author who wrote the popular Dimsie series of books published between 1921 and 1941. Her books were second in popularity only to Angela Brazil's during the 1920s and 1930s. The Dimsie books alone had sold half a million hardback copies by 1947.
Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley, was an English girls' story writer, who took the name Oxenham as her pseudonym when her first book, Goblin Island, was published in 1907. Her Abbey Series of 38 titles are her best-known and best-loved books. In her lifetime she had 87 titles published and another two have since been published by her niece, who discovered the manuscripts in the early 1990s. She is considered a major figure among girls' story writers of the first half of the twentieth century, being one of the 'Big Three' with Elinor Brent-Dyer and Dorita Fairlie Bruce. Angela Brazil is as well-known - perhaps more so - but did not write her books in series about the same group of characters or set in the same place or school, as did the Big Three.
Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad's Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens. Today the building is the independent Gad's Hill School.
Abbey Connectors are titles by Elsie J. Oxenham that connect into her main Abbey Series. They fall into several sub-series, listed here in best reading order, with the Abbey Titles they relate to shown in their place in the mini-series, but without publication details, which are on the main Abbey Series page:
Non-Connectors are titles by Elsie J. Oxenham that do not connect into her main Abbey Series.
For the politician in Colorado see Ruth B. Clark
The Blue Coat School in York, England, was founded in 1705 as a charity school for forty poor boys. There was a smaller school for girls known as the Grey Coat School, York.
Arthur John Balliol Salmon was a British artist particularly noted for his illustrations and his work in pencil, chalk and pastels. He was one of the twenty leading illustrators selected by Percy V. Bradshaw for inclusion in his Art of the Illustrator.
Samuel Walkey was an English bank inspector, who used his spare time when travelling to write, and became a prolific author of boy's adventure fiction. Walkey wrote at least sixteen novels and hundreds of magazine stories. He contributed stories to magazines for more than 40 years.
John Edward Gunby Hadath was an English schoolmaster, lawyer, company promoter, songwriter, journalist, and author of boarding school stories. He is best remembered for over seventy novels of which over two-thirds were set in English Public Schools.
Edith Elise Cadogan Cowper was a prolific and popular author of adventure stories for girls. She married yachtsman and fellow writer Frank Cowper and had eight children by him before the marriage fell apart.
Mary Strange Reeve was an English miniaturist, book illustrator, and commercial artist. Her most lasting work is probably her illustrations for girls' school stories.
United Kingdom