A Year of re-reading 2: The Chalet School series

[callmemadam]

Way back in June, I announced my intention of re-reading the whole series of Chalet School books by Elinor M Brent-Dyer. I started very well, getting through a book a day and constantly replenishing my pile. Then, half way through Mary-Lou, I stuck, stopped and gave up.

Comments

[debodacious]

I sold some of the later ones - now I love the early and wartime books but nothing much after that.

[callmemadam]

You're very strong-minded!
I probably like the wartime stories best, which must mean I prefer the school to be in England. Rather misses the point of it's being The Chalet School!

[feather_ghyll]

when the school was getting well established in EnglandEr, do you mean Wales? The United Kingdom would also be accurate

[callmemadam]

No offence! Would 'borders' suit?

Someone pointed out in a comment on Dreamwidth that the San would soon have become superfluous, thus removing one of the reasons for having the school in the mountains.

I should think that girls in the 1920s and 30s would have found it all very exotic. I was talking once to someone my own age who had spent much of her childhood in India; 1960s, I suppose. Apparently, they got the Australian hardbacks there and she read them avidly. I think I only read one when I was young and found them later, when I discovered the pleasure of (some) school stories.

I imagine most collectors found the books through the Armada reprints and then, depending on how much they liked them, tried to upgrade. I used to pick them up at car boot sales and in charity shops and I certainly read them out of order.

[feather_ghyll]

The border/Marches would be better, though I have to admit that I was mainly thinking of the time on the island, but as soon as I hit 'post' I started to recall that they were leaving there, but even so, the time the school spent there counted.

And yes, of course, the San would soon become superfluous.Realstically, sending your daughters to Switzerland would have been dearer and they'd have been further away.

Reading about skiing/skating schoolgirls was exotic in south Wales in the 1980s too! It wasn't such a strange thing to be reading and buying the reprints, but suplementing them with other paperbacks, mainly, from charity shops was more unusual. I've upgraded a few to Chambers hardbacks, but I'm more interestd in completing the collection, except I keep getting distracted, and it's only since the pandemic that I've started seriously searching for specific books online, instead of wandering into a shop and seeing what they had there.