Abstract
Angela Brazil’s The Madcap of the School (1917) is included in this study of classic works for girls, not for the enduring qualities of the individual text, but because it functions as an exemplar of the school story genre that Brazil pioneered and that was to have such a profound impact on girls’ reading experience during the twentieth century. Unlike earlier works considered in this study, such as Little Women or The Secret Garden, The Madcap of the School is no longer enjoyed by a modern audience, nor is it even easily available in print. Yet, together with forty-eight other full-length novels by Brazil, and approximately seventy short stories of boarding-school life that she produced for magazines, it played a significant part in the creation of a new and highly influential literary genre, a genre that addressed a specifically female juvenile readership in a direct challenge to the sentimental tradition of much previous fiction for girls.
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Notes
Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Princess at the Chalet School (London: Armada Books, 1927), p.8.
Angela Brazil, The Madcap of the School (London: Blackie, 1917), p.240. All subsequent references are to this edition and will be included in the text.
Gill Frith, ‘The Time of Your Life: The Meaning of the School Story’, in eds Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Urwin, Valerie Walkerdine, Gender, Language and Childhood (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p.123.
Jan Montefiore, ‘The fourth form girls go camping: sexual ambivalence and identity in girls’ school stories’, in eds Michael Worton and Judith Still, Textuality and Sexuality: Reading Theories and Practices (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993), p.174.
Jeffrey Richards, ‘The School Story’, in ed. Dennis Butts Stories and Society: Children’s Literature in its Social Context (London: Macmillan, 1992), p.10.
Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls (London: The Women’s Press, 1992), p.64.
Sarah Fielding, The Governess or, Little Female Academy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p.115.
Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig, You’re a Brick, Angela: A New Look at Girls’ Fiction 1839–1975 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1976).
Pauline Nestor, Female Friendships and Communities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p.20.
Gillian Avery, ‘Home and Family: English and American Ideals in the Nineteenth Century’, in ed. Butts, op.cit., p.38.
L.T. Meade, A World of Girls: A Story of a Shool (London: Cassell, 1908), p.59.
J.S. Bratton, ‘Girls’ Fiction 1900–1930’, in ed. Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and Juvenile Literature (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989), p.197.
Gill Frith, op.cit., p.121.
Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture: From ‘Jackie’ to ‘Just Seventeen’ (London: Macmillan, 1991), p.207.
Isobel Quigly, The Heirs of Tom Brown: The English School Story (London: Chatto & Windus, 1982), p.218.
Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16(3), Autumn 1975, reprinted in eds Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl, Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), p.436.
Gillian Avery, The Best Type of Girl: A History of Girls’ Independent Schools (London: André Deutsch, 1991), p.316.
Ibid., p.317.
Ibid., p.86.
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© 1995 Shirley Foster and Judy Simons
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Foster, S., Simons, J. (1995). Angela Brazil: The Madcap of the School . In: What Katy Read. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23933-7_9
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