Chin Up, Chest Out, Jemima! A Celebration of the Schoolgirls' Story

Chin Up, Chest Out, Jemima! was first published in 1989, a decade after You’re a Brick, Angela (co-authored with Patricia Craig). This lovingly produced re-print (featured in BfK November 2004) comes with a new introduction and is a positive rattle bag of material. There are: introductory pieces on authors and themes; reprints of stories from contemporary ‘schoolgirl papers’ like The School Friend, and extracts from novels by writers such as Dorita Fairlie Bruce and Elinor Brent Dyer. There are poems, pictures, advertisements and writers’ letters to young readers, pastiche schoolgirl stories written by the author, and a history of the Girl Guides.

It’s interesting to remember (or learn) that the writers of Schoolgirl Papers Stories were often men using female pen names and, much like series books today, the stories and characters were frequently passed from writer to writer. The famous female novelists of the period were all unmarried and created characters who were famously chaste and sexless in their relationships with boys, but were often attracted to each other and paired off in the kind of intense friendship that might have a different interpretation today.

The heyday for these stories was the 1920s and 30s and the extracts here show writing which remains surprisingly lively and engaging. Cadogan’s contributions are descriptive rather than analytic – a celebration rather than analysis of the genre. As she points out, since the first publication of this book there have been a number of other studies, Rosemary Auchmuty’s important study, The World of Girls, for example. However, for those nostalgic for the world of boarding school girls, this is a highly enjoyable book. The many and gorgeous illustrations on their own – the Abbey Girls having pranks in the dorm; the Chalet Girls defeating adversity in the Alps – make this book worth buying.