Here’s my annual round-up of highlights from 2018 posts. (All the links go to my Dreamwidth account.) ( Read more... )

Biddy and Quilla: Evelyn Smith, Blackie

Evelyn Smith provides a sympathetic look at growing pains through a burgeoning friendship here. A few plot contrivances aside, it’s realistic, psychologically accurate and amusing.

Priscilla ‘Quilla’ Thornton is ( Read more... )

Here is a round-up of some things I posted about last year.( Read more... )

( A Miss Silver mystery, missing pages, Binkie of IIIB by Evelyn Smith and Shadow on the Moon by Zoe Marriot )

I’ll post an overview of a few books I’ve read over the holidays eventually, but this post is a look back at 2015, following a tradition started by my first post of 2015 when I said I looked forward to the next adventures of Wells and Wong. Well, Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens (in which the 1930s schoolgirls investigate another mystery, this ( Read more... )

The Little Betty Wilkinson: Evelyn Smith. Blackie

There is an explanation for the title, which seems an odd one for a school story and more suitable for a late nineteenth century/turn of the twentieth girls’ story by a Mrs A.B.C. Double-Barrel. I’ll get to it in a moment.

At the start of the book, Betty Wilkinson’s life is ( Read more... )

Terry’s Best Term: Evelyn Smith Blackie (an inscription reveals that my copy was a gift in Christmas 1959, although the content suggests that it was first published during the interwar period, and an article in Folly says it was 1926,)

She thought of Terry, and her firm little face softened. She liked Terry, liked her tremendously. People always ( Read more... )

I just put this down with a smile on my face...

Phyllida in Form III: Evelyn Smith. Blackie 1953?

I've written about Evelyn Smith here before, but feel I should point out that if you love girls' own and haven't read anything by her, you are missing out a treat.( Read more... )

I'm currently dipping in and out of The Big Book of School Stories for Girls, edited by Mrs Herbert Strand and published by Humphrey Milford - the Oxford University Press. I've never been one to buy annuals and what-do-you-call-thems...anthologies? I prefer girls own stories in longer form, on the whole, and here's always the possibility of stories ( Read more... )

Nicky of the Lower Fourth by Evelyn Smith (Blackie & Son.) is the first book by this authoress that I’ve ever read, but I’ll certainly keep an eye out for more from now on. ( Read more... )