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.

[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]

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

[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.

[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...)

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

It's from the Christmas bit in Peter's room - the fragile glass Christmas-tree baubles that survived two house moves and the Blitz but didn't survive Lawrie dropping them on the flagstone floor. :)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Yes I thought I saw some style similarities too. Which is unusual...the only other time I've seen echoes in a children's book was Jenny Overton's Creed Country, which was maybe not so much the style as the subject matter: girl from very numerous family makes friends with only child boy who has a passionate interest in religious history; she also has a very pious older sister called Anne! (Although this time the prolific family are Catholic - Anne wants to be nun - and the boy is an Anglican.) Are there any other AF influenced/mentored children's authors?

[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.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of similarities between Harriet Martyn's Jenny And The Syndicate and Autumn Term, but I'm afraid I don't know whether the authors knew each other.

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

Jenny Overton's other book about the Creed family too. I'm forgetting the name at the moment--maybe *Nightwatch Winter*? One of the Overton books also revolves around a Christmas play, as I recall, and the family reminded me an awful lot of the Marlows. I own those books but it's been ages since I've read them. I enjoyed them but the characters were't really that vivid.

[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!

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

I love the Jenny books, but I do think that Jenny and the Syndicate is a cross between Autumn Term and Dimsie Goes to School/The Senior Prefect with a 1980s backdrop.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, Tim Kennemore sent AF one of her then unpublished novels to read. AF liked it and recommended the novel to her own publisher.

I love Tim Kennemore's work - at least her work from the 1980s (I haven't read her more recent fantasy stuff, and they don't really appeal). The Fortunate Few, set in the gymnastics world, is just brilliant. She's my favourite writer after AF.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

It was Claudine in Paris that made me "gasp and stretch my eyes".
Either I was over-naive about "School" or I just thought that it was an overdramatic Frenchified "crush" or both. Perhaps my French wasn't fluent enough to see all the implications.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I've only read Wall of Words (which I like) and Middle of the Sandwich which I had read as a child and reread recently. I quite liked it but it seemed dated - not least in the rather irritating idea, stated by the supposedly kindly aunt at the end, that children should cope with bullies unaided and adults should never intervene. But I think I might go searching for more titles now...and Harriet Martyn too.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had no trouble with the French. It was rather I expected midnight feasts and pranks and was somewhat surprised to find the heroine touched up by a male school inspector on page 3 and fancying her female teacher, who was actually shagging the headmistress on page 4. :-) Not quite Mddle de Lachenais and Mddle Le Pattre, was it?

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

I loved the Fortunate Few, it's been years since I read it, but I can still see scenes from the book in my head.