Evelyn Smith

[jumpingpowder.livejournal.com]

I wondered if anyone else had read the school stories of Evelyn Smith, writing in the 1920s and someone Forest remembered reading though not one of her favourites? Lovely characterisation. They're republished and on kindle at the moment for £4 or so each. Seven Sisters at Queen Anne's has a few striking turns of phrase and themes which recur in Autumn Term; stern head, for example, leaving girls feeling 'bruised' and telling one that 'The prefect system has had a long and successful record at Q Anne's, X, and I should be sorry if it were to be spoiled, particularly sorry if it were to be spoiled when you were head girl...';large family,youngest sibling with trailing stockings, and a hugely successful play for those excluded from school event written up hastily in exercise books. Things which stuck in the mind, perhaps!

Comments

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I do live Evelyn Smith's stories, though I can never quite remember what they are like after I finish.

[learnsslowly.livejournal.com]

I read Seven sisters at Queen Anne's but didn't know there were any more. Thank you.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Can someone who's read Evelyn Smith answer a question I've got? When I was about ten/eleven I absolutely devoured an entire bookcase full of old girls' school stories which were in a bookcase at my primary school -- not part of the official school library, just in the corner of a classroom (I suspect I was probably supposed to be learning how to knit or something.) None of them were Forest, but when I finally read Autumn Term I realised that it had something I'd responded to in some of these other ones. In particular, there's one where a girl who's been seriously ill (ill enough to have had her head shaved, for fever - typhoid, I think - and to be self conscious about its growing back erratically) comes to a new school and is put in the House everyone thinks of as the duffers. And one of the reasons it's thought of as the duffers is that there's an entire family of odd-looking eccentrics whom everyone hates and despises - very like Marie Dobson, in the way their looks are described, if all the Marlows were variants on that look. Only the girl becomes friends with the youngest one, who's in her year, and eventually the house manages to win the House Cup by playing on all the strengths this family have that no-one else have discovered because of despising them; for example, the two eldest girls, who have now left, do exquisite embroidery (or lace making?) when left to themselves, but because the school insisted everyone start at the bottom, using the English techniques the DS teacher knew, and not the skills the older girls had been taught (possibly abroad) no-one spotted this. And they send lots of things which help make a bazaar stall a success.

And so on. Does anyone recognise it and could it have been an Evelyn Smith?

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

This sounds like E M Channon's The Honour Of the House.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Definitely the one! Thanks.

Evelyn Smith

[catwithcreamy.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of ES's stories, and have just now read 'Seven Sisters..' on Kindle - many, many pre-echoes of AF's phrases and style. Actually I'm very slightly sad that I read it, as I feel it's taken the gloss off AF for me somehow. Still, I expect my grief will be controlable...

Re: Evelyn Smith

[(Anonymous)]

Oh dear - perhaps I shouldn't have posted. I think myself the echoes may belimited to Autumn Term, or at least they are stronger there, and what I recollect of AF's description of that makes it sound like a conscious genre piece, drawing on what she knew. What strikes me still is how much deeper and better her work is than the rest of the genre.
jumpingpowder with lost password

Re: Evelyn Smith

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

There are definitely elements of satire of the school story as a genre in Autumn Term, and the Smith echoes fit in with that, imo.

7 Sisters and sequels

[(Anonymous)]

There are two sequels by Evelyn Smith - I think they're called Septima at School, and Phyllida in 3b. They both start with the first names of the youngest of the girls, anyway.

Colne_dsr.