Mask of Apollo and "Restricted Books"

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

I think I've asked this before and nobody came up with any suggestions, but I'm doing another edit and thought I'd try again.

Nicola gets in trouble at some point because she takes this Mary Renault novel to school with her and not only is it an extra book, and (I think) from the local library, but in the Kingscote library it's Restricted or Limited or whatever the term is.  We've talked before about her take on why it should have been Restricted; and I am sad to think that it would probably still be the equivalent of Restricted in many American school libraries today.

My question was:  what other books would have been restricted in an English girls' school?  Books that would have been deemed suitable for the Seniors but not for the Juniors?  I need something written before 1938, something that might have appealed to an adventurous 12-year-old.  I need this for my own children's book, and it's the kind of thing that's impossible for a 20-year-old American RA to figure out!  I thought that somebody here might have an idea, though.

Comments

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Well, my school librarian used to smuggle Dorothy L Sayers out of the sixth form library for me to read. I think they were probably deemed too violent, and possibly the occasional sexual references may also have been thought too much for 11-12 year olds.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I always thought that was just an incentive to learn French. :)

[glittermouse.livejournal.com]

Can I ask you about the bauble icon and what it means?

(while mentioning the possibility of The Well Of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall being a banned book perhaps? Or am I being dim? It was not allowed in our 6th form/school library and that was as late as 1995...)

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Me too! I've translated those letters more than once. And I was very excited to hear someone singing 'Aupres de ma blonde' on a French tape a year or two ago.

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

This is rather brilliant. I already had some vague references to Sayers in this book and suddenly I can see a rather clever way to use her for several subplots, including in later books in my planned series. When I was an adolescent, Sayers and Forest were the two authors I knew best (not to say obsessively), so this is an easy tie-in.

I can well understand why her books were restricted. In fact, today I was trying to think of which one my sympathetic teacher can innocently offer my main character to read--one that's genuinely inoffensive in 1938 terms--and it was hard to come up with one. They're all full of adultery, odd episodes of nudity, drugs, and other forms of anti-social behavior (and of course lesbianism and anti-Semitism, which is off-putting even today). I'm thinking that *Nine Tailors* is pretty tame--the "adulterous" couple there didn't actually intend to not be married. As an adolescent I never picked up on any of this stuff, and I'm sure Nicola the Sayers fan didn't either, but a prurient adult would definitely have restricted those books.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

Is there any update re. the possible publication of your book, Elizabeth? A while back you mentioned having sent it to an agent. I have read so many teasers for your book on lj that I'm feeling quite desperate to read it, it sounds so brilliant.

[owl]

I'm hoping that you mistyped in some way when you said lesbianism ...which is off-putting even today. If you do feel that way about homosexuality, I would prefer that you keep it out of comments on trennels.

I don't remember any nudity (bar corpses) expect single-sex bathing places and Peter in his bedroom (can we infer from Mrs Ruddle's comments what height the window-frame was?), and I doubt that would have been terrible in 1938, certainly not on the level of drug-running.

Sayer's anti-Semitism would be one thing that wouldn't have got her books banned pre-WWII, because at her level it was institutionalised.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Hooray! Glad to have been of service. As I remember it, my mother gave me 'Have his Carcase' for Christmas when I was about fourteen and then the librarian let me read 'Strong Poison', 'Gaudy Night' and 'Busman's Honeymoon.' I think I only later found 'Murder Must Advertise' and some of the others - I don't think the library even had copies of all of them.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Ummm (ignoring the comments about nudity, lesbianism etc, which appear to be adequately dealt with below): including diverse forms of anti-social behaviour was pretty well par for the Golden Age crime novel. Not just the actual murder but various surrounding circumstances. See any Agatha Christie; and several of Georgette Heyer's mysteries included homosexual (m&f) characters. It's a classic exemplar of the well-known fact (trenchantly delineated in an essay by Rebecca West) that writers of that period could get away with far racier and much dodgier situations in popular genres such as the crime novel than writers of 'serious literature'.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

When I first went to boarding school in 1985 the Juniors (aged 11 and 12) were in a separate building with own library, and you weren't allowed to use the library in the main school.

I was particularly unimpressed as the Junior library was pretty small and full of musty old classics, but in the absence of anything else to read I read them anyway. Essentially the only suitable books were ones aimed at children; anything aimed at an adult audience wasn't there.

Thinking of adult pre-1938 books that I might have read at 12 - various Agatha Christies and other detective novels, CS Forester who wrote Hornblower had had some books published by 1938. Or Rider Haggard - She, King Solomon's Mines? I suspect John Buchan (39 Steps etc) would also have been 'too much for the little ones' despite being beloved by the Chalet School.
Also LMMontgomery's 'Rilla of Ingleside' was excluded from many libraries despite the popularity of the rest of the Anne of Green Gables series, for being too downbeat. My local library wouldn't order it for me when I was 11 or so (I found it a few years later and god it was depressing, partly because I hadn't clocked until Walter's death that this was in WWI, having assumed that the first book was very similar to my parents' upbringing in the 40s and thus Rilla should be in the late 1960s...)

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Ginty reads The Greengage Summer when she's in the Upper Fifth and therefore presumably has access to the Limited section - maybe one of Rumer Godden's other adult novels? I can see the Kingscote staff not wanting the Thirds to innocently think 'Oh, that's by the same person who wrote Miss Happiness And Miss Flower' and pick up The Black Narcissus.

Alternatively, how about something by Joseph Conrad?

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Another thought, sorry. How about Evelyn Waugh?

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

In the 1983 children's book, The Middle of the Sandwich by Tim Kennemore, the 12/13 year old protagonist isn't allowed to take The War of the Worlds out of the local library (a friend's parent then lends it to her as a point of liberal principle, and she finds it too heavy-going). TWOTW was definitely written before 1938. :)

Brave New World was published in 1932 but I'm not sure it would have made it into any school library in 1938.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

this is a bit off topic, but speaking of Time Kennemore I'm pretty sure that Tim Kennemore's book "Wall of Words" is dedicated to Antonia Forest. (I don't have a copy available to check.) I've always nosily wondered what the connection is - before I knew anything about AF's life I thought they might be mother-daughter (for some reason I'm pretty sure - despite the name - that Tim Kennemore - like Tim Keith is female although I don't know anything else about her. And hey, two female Tim Ks - what is going on?)

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

I asked Antonia Forest if Tim Kennemore had any connection with her Tim.

Tim Kennemore is female and knew AF - I think AF was a bit of a mentor to her early in her writing career; she thought she was a gifted writer. There was no relationship and the Tim K thing is just a coincidence. I gather there was a bit of a coolness between them latterly but I don't know why.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

When I read War of Words, I thought the style was very like AF's. An excellent book - I recommend it.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Colette's Claudine books were theoretically restricted to Sixth Form readers in the 1950s, but in practice there was no obstacle to anyone above Fourth Form taking them off the shelf.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

I remember borrowing Claudine at School from our local library when I was about 11, thinking it was a school story. Having bought and read it in more recent years, I do wonder what I made of it at 11, given I was a very naive child!

[pisica.livejournal.com]

When I read Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks, the edition had an introduction in which the guy commented that merely possessing the book was enough to get you expelled from Eton, I think it was. (Sultry foreign woman seduces young upstanding British gent, I believe the plot boils down to.) Maybe the book wouldn't have been seen to have the same desirability to young women, but I suppose it could have been.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Sultry foreign (married) queen seduces upstanding young Brit, for purposes of begetting a healthy child instead of one fathered by her diseased and degenerate husband, to inherit the throne. I.e. it's as much about eugenics as it is about sex.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

In one of the Chalet School novels, a girl gets into trouble for reading "Gone with the Wind" (this was changed to "Forever Amber" in later editions of the book).

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Gone With The Wind was available in America in 1936 but I don't think it reached Britain until the War was under way - my grandmother, who was in the Army, used to reminisce about the one copy that got passed around her unit, everyone having subscribed to buy a hardback between them.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

"I Claudius" was published in 1934, but I doubt any pre-war schools would include it among the library for girls of any age. Possibly an adventurous 12-year-old with liberal parents might smuggle it in from home.

There's a book by Arthur Marshall called "Giggling in the Shrubbery" which might (or might not) be useful to you - it's a collection of reminiscences of pre-war schoolgirls (but probably more 1920's than 1930's). It needs taking with perhaps a pinch of salt - he appears to concentrate on noticeably odd behaviour - no school could exhibit all the conditions illustrated unless run by a truly certifiable head. Anyway, the books he mentioned as being banned in various schools are: anything by Angela Brazil (that was in 1920); "Tell England", by Ernest Raymond; "Sorrell & Son", by Warwick Deeping; "Gone with the Wind", and anything by Alexander Dumas (that was in a Catholic school). Georgette Heyer was mentioned as being permitted, but it may only have been for the older girls perhaps?

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

Why would Dumas have been particularly restricted at a Catholic school? He was actually my one previous thought of an author who would have been generally restricted.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

"I Claudius" was my first reaction. For comparison, btw, our new school library in the late 1950s, for use of all girls from 11 upwards, had on the shelves not only "I Claudius" but all the Mary Renault historical novels as they came out.