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

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.