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#1: Gymslip fiction is back in fashion Author: Róisín, Location: Gaillimh

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:20 pm
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Originally posted July 23 2006 by Ally. Article source is here.
There was some discussion about profits following this post, which have been archived under Profits in the Anything Else forum.

Quote:

Gymslip fiction is back in fashion, thanks to two diehard fand of the Chalet School stories. Bravo, says Lucy Mangan

'I say, Clarissa, what a super garden!' said Lucy as they climbed out of the car and made their way up the front path to the cottage door.

'Thanks awfully,' said Clarissa, opening the door and taking off her beret with the crest that showed she was Head Girl, ribbons that showed she was a stalwart of the Hockey First XI and colours proclaiming her to be a member of Topping House at St Anodyne's Boarding School for Edwardian Girls. 'Do come in!' she said…

It's hard not to construct such interior dialogues when meeting Clarissa Cridland and Ann Mackie-Hunter in Clarissa's tiny cottage in Somerset, from which they run the absolutely ripping Girls Gone By publishers (GGB). They reprint - with all original illustrations and cover pictures - lost and forgotten girls' school stories by, among others, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (of course), Dorita Fairlie Bruce (author of the Dimsie and Nancy books), Elsie J. Oxenham (the Abbey Girls' series), with other works by the likes of Malcolm Saville, Monica Edwards and Geoffrey Trease.

It is a bonus to discover that the founders of such an operation are a pairing exactly of the kind mandated by the Traditional School Stories Act, 1938: Clarissa, a deacon in the Church of England, is tall, thin, quiet and precise.

Ann is shorter, wider, ebullient and given to 'sticking up' for her almost pathologically modest friend ('She's very good with computers.' 'No, I'm not.' 'Well, she seems good to me.')

The two first got to know each other years ago through the Friends of the Chalet School Society, created by Ann. ('I was a huge reader,' she says, 'but the Chalet School books were special to me.')

Seven years ago, GGB emerged 'almost by accident' as a result of their shared passion for book collecting, the chance discovery of an unpublished manuscript by an admired author and a mutual desire 'to make these old books live again, to bring them back to the people who have loved them for years.'

The first book they brought out - in an edition of 250 copies - was Lorna Hill's never-before-seen Northern Lights, which was snapped up, mostly by friends and fellow collectors. Now they publish about 1,500 copies of 30 books a year: the business has an annual turnover of £250,000.

The books are published in paperback, with original pictures and cover art. 'The great thing is to have them available as written - not a travesty of an abridgement or modernisation, which I think is an insult to readers,' says Ann.

Their success is part of a wider trend: as the major publishing houses have merged, independent publishers have thrived. Tiny outfits like GGB (and even smaller ones like Bettany Press or Fidra books) have sprung up like midnight feasts in a junior dorm to cater for niche tastes that have been overlooked or dismissed as unprofitable.

And there is something particularly pleasing about the fact that it is new technology that is bringing these old stories back into circulation. 'Even 15 years ago,' says Clarissa, 'we could not have made this happen.
'The website provides a third of our sales, we can send manuscripts to our proof-readers who are all over the place and if we need an illustration or a dustwrapper that we don't have, we just email a request to a children's literature discussion group and someone jpegs something overnight.'

Although there are a few teenagers on the GGB customer list, most of the readers are adults. Why? Well, common sense (and Ann, who taught English and history before ill-health forced her to retire) tells us that the reading standards of today's children have slipped to the point where, if they were presented with a 1930s-penned story, the vocabulary and assumed knowledge therein would leave them, as Elsie J. Oxenham might put it, totally fogged.

Ann flicks through Stormy Petrel in some frustration. 'They just couldn't cope with any of this!'And, she adds, children's imaginations are shrinking. 'I noticed it first in creative writing - I was getting rehashes of films and television shows, rather than original pieces. J.K. Rowling has done great things by lifting children out of the mundane, but there's no doubt that they remain far less literate today.'

And if children are now too busy collecting Asbos and sexually transmitted diseases to bother with the latest Chalet School adventures, we can assume that the books are being bought mainly by adults, for themselves.

What can they be getting out of them? Well, just as there are comfort eaters, so there are comfort readers, and their appetites are just as voracious.

As a child, I was a Dimsie fan, and still at times of stress I pull her off the shelf, because to retreat into the Lower Fourth is to retreat into a better world, when I could head to the sofa with a book and know nothing but gorse bushes, scholarship dreams, twisted ankles in vital lacrosse matches and emergency gallops across downs till teatime.

Clarissa is reluctant to admit that the formulaic nature of the books is a part of the attraction - made wary, I think, by the mockery that often accompanies such an acknowledgement - but she does concede that 'these are feelgood books' which she takes to bed with her when she is ill.

Ann is more forthright. 'Reading is about pleasure, not social improvement. And re-reading even more so. You wouldn't eat your favourite meal just once, would you? No, you'd have the anticipation of what was to come and enjoy it every time.'

Their success can be seen as part of a wider nostalgia. Even if you have no idyllic childhood memories attached to your first reading of Brent-Dyer or Angela Brazil, even if you are aware of their limitations as genre fiction, there is still a pleasure in reading them as period pieces, just as there is in watching B-movies for the hats, coats and clipped vowels rather than lamenting the fact that they are not all Casablanca.

'These are good stories about England as people would like to remember it - without being wholly unrealistic or soppy,' says Clarissa. 'All "our" authors wrote of their time and the world which they knew, and that comes across.'

'It's a genre that creates a feeling of stability in an increasingly unstable and fragmented world. You have to close your mind to it or you'd go mad,' says Ann. 'Yes, GGB has ended up as our living, but its raison d'être is to make the books available - to people who loved them then and to people who need them now.'

Girls Gone By is holding a conference at Warwick University, August 18-21; further information on www.ggbp.co.uk

mimble-bimble:

Lesley: Have read it - very interesting.

Laura V: very interesting indeed! makes me want to set up my own publishing company!

Tara: I actually hated it, typical of the patronising, tongue-in-cheek-and-totally-ignoring-everything-important attitude of the 1970s 'You're a Brick' era. I thought we'd gone past that. I'd be spitting feathers if I were Ann and Clarissa - except that there's no such thing as bad publicity, I suppose.

Róisín: Yes - there probably is no such thing as bad publicity and hopefully some people will have read the article and thought 'Hurrah! Where is their contact number?' etc

DramaPrefect: Definitely agree Roisin. All it takes is a little something to jog memory of the books, or finding out where to find them if someone's been thinking they'd get them if they knew where.

I think it's correct to say it's mainly adults who read these books, but rather mean to say kids can't handle them. I was reading Chalets at a younger age than my mum (I was 7 when I got my first ones, and I think she was 12, though she'll no doubt jump in and correct me if I'm wrong). The only difficulty I ever had with them was some of the foriegn words - apparently I've pronouncing Freudesheim wrong all of these years!

KB: They weren't saying kids can't handle them - just that modern kids who haven't had exposure to such a broad range of books may not understand them as well as kids/people who were.

Champagnedrinker: And, given that the paper had another article on another page about what teenagers think about reading, they could be right ... See here. It wasn't clear though what questions they actually asked, nor what the children interpreted by them. For example, they said that children said that they spend "less than one hour reading at school each day", but, they didn't say if they'd implied that they were meant to be talking about reading literature (in which case I'd have thought that an hour was pretty good going), or reading anything, in which case I would be worrying about what they were doing ... don't they read science books / worksheets/ etc., a lot of the time. Maybe though they don't see that as reading, rather as science/ maths/ whatever.

Quote:

Many of the pupils surveyed were bemused by the question "Is reading your favourite activity?" Eighty-five per cent responded in the negative and cited watching television, playing computer games and socialising with friends as their main priorities. A significant number expanded on their answer with phrases such as "You must be joking". By contrast, 79 per cent of children spent more than an hour a day in front of the television set, and more than a third (39 per cent) watched for three or more hours a day, often late at night, without the knowledge of their parents.

(from the article)
Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised that for 15% reading *is* their favourite activity, given the range of things that most children are taken to after school these days.

Elder in Ontario: I was still able to access both these articles at 10 pm Sunday my time (3am Monday in the UK). But I don't know for how many days these links remain valid.
I take your point Tara, about the writer's attitude - though I don't think it's quite as bad as the 'You're a Brick, Angela' one. And the details of the research into how much children read was interesting - disappointing in some ways, I suppose, but not, I fear, too unexpected, given the overall standards these days.
But you know, those children who want to read will continue to do so and enjoy it.
For what it's worth, my eldest granddaughter had read all the Chalet books, some of the La Rochelles and some of EBD's other books by the time she was 10 (she's 12 now) but hasn't really taken to all the other GGBP books, though I think she's read some Lorna Hill.
But then, she *is* a good reader - in fact she was in her school's team who competed in the Kids' Lit contest last December and won the UK final, who just last month competed in New Zealand against 12 NZ schools, 1 from South Africa and 1 from Shanghai - they came in 4th there! Her sister also reads avidly - don't think she's quite reached the Chalet School yet, but I know she has St. Clare's and Malory Towers under her belt already (she'll be 9 in September). And yes, I do realise they aren't the 'average' readers who may have been surveyed for that study!

Fatima: Having produced three daughters, I'm somewhat disappointed to find that the two who are old enough to read won't touch the CS books; I have all my hopes pinned to the third one! The eldest reads a lot, but probably watches television more. We're at a disadvantage here as the choice of books is limited and they're expensive. I do agree with the books being difficult for many children - mine would find them hard going, having been brought up in such a different environment they would find a lot of things hard to understand. I'm still convinced that they'd enjoy them if they'd persevere, but they won't. Perhaps it's an attempt to be different from Mum that stops them from trying!

Lucy: What a depressing article.
Do we just totally agree that todays reading standards have dropped to the point where today's children have slipped to the point where, if they were presented with a 1930s-penned story, the vocabulary and assumed knowledge therein would leave them totally fogged?
I began reading the books in the 80's but somehow found myself able to follow what was happening! And that wasn't exactly in the time period. So whats happened in the subsequent years? I suspect nothing! What an insulting artictle to children today.
There is a real problem because CS books are not accessible to children today. And that has to be in part to the price of the books - who knows a child who can afford £10 a book for something they've never read? Or even if they're a fan £10 is expensive. Don't get me wrong - I love the GBBP reprints and am an avid collector of the books. But I really feel a new generation are missing out because the books are priced beyond them - where do we attract new collectors from?
And if we accept that GGBP are aiming for collector sales (as most of us are) is that ok? Because as a child of the 80's I loved going into Waterstones and buying the latest CS book. And that wasn't hip or trendy and I was way too old too be in the childrens department. But... where do todays kids become fans?
And I'm not sure. And that is sad. GGBP is great for us. But not for new collectors.

Kitty B: I teach English Literature to students aged 12 - 17, and sadly, I have to agree with the notion that reading Chalet books would be hard going for many of today's pre-teens and teens. I've had classes of 13-14 year olds struggle with Geoffrey Trease's Cue for Treason, even though it was written for that age group. (if not younger!)
However, I don't know that it is simply that reading standards have fallen. There are so many things competing for kids' attention these days; many just don't have the patience for somewhat slower-paced stories. Faster, sexier stories and first person narration seem to be more popular with teen readers today. (Think Jaqueline Wilson, Louise Rennison, Susan Juby, etc.)
I think it's also important to take into account that the original target audience for CS and its ilk would have read more of the classics of the previous century, and, as a result, would probably have had much larger reading vocabularies than the average teen today.
Hmmmm..... this is making me wonder what would be happening if the Chalet School were a going concern in this millenium.... would EBD have the Middles sending each other sms messages during prep instead of tapping Morse with their pencils?

Róisín: Lucy wrote: GGBP is great for us. But not for new collectors.
Really good point, and one I hadn't thought of. And now that they have the copyright, does that mean that they are the only people allowed to publish them? If so, they will stay aimed at a niche market of collectors.
On the other hand, they might not be being published *at all*. It's hard to find some kind of middle ground here. Short term gain for long term loss? But going by the racism thread, I don't think many of us would be happy with an updated version of the books, as has happened to Enid Blyton.

Caroline: I think we have to face the fact that no mainstream publisher is interested in the vast majority of our kind of books. There's no money to be made, to put it bluntly. So if it wasn't for GGB (and the like), these books wouldn't be published at all. The only reason GGB got the rights in the first place (before they bought the copyright) is that HarperCollins weren't interested anymore.
The £10 cost is basically a result of the small size of the print runs. Economies of scale, and all, it is vastly cheaper to print a large number of books and really quite expensive to print a very small number of books. And GGB can't afford to hold lots of stock (I'm guessing they would risk be taxed on books before they had actually sold them), so print runs are necessarily small.
I'm afraird it's an unfortunate reality, and although it probably creates a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy - in that the harder the books are to get hold of, the fewer people will want them, so fewer will be printed and the harder they will be to find - it is going to happen. But look at the Abbey books. People are still reading and collecting them, and they have never even been in paperback, and the last one was published in the 1950s.
I guess that means it is up to the likes of us to make sure these books never die.

Squirrel: I think that on top of this last comment, despite the fact that I am only rarely in the market for spending that amount of money on a leisure book - even ones I love as much as the CS at present, as time goes on I would hope to have more money that I *could* put towards books. I'm sure I am not the only one in this position on the board.
As those of us who are presently in situations where we cannot buy books of the kind get closer to the stage where we can start to spend more money on books of the kind, the market will continue to be there.

Frogize: My girls didn't really get a choice - I read Chalet School books to them as bedtime stories! They both enjoyed them ("You do great voices, Mum.") and still say they were as addictive as TV soaps once you get into them.

Tara: I remember the despair I felt when trying to re-collect the hbs in the 70s. Nothing was in print, not even the pbs, and I felt as if dear friends had died. I am so, so glad that GGBP, whatever their faults, and I don't fully agree with all their philosophies, are making the books available, and I think they do a really good job within the economic constraints they have to work under.
It is such an enormous tribute to EBD that the world she created is so powerfully alive so many years later, and in a very different world - the very existence of this board seems a minor miracle to me. I'm fascinated , too, at the way in which people analyse and change the elements in the books they can't get their heads around (class etc) in their drabbles - and care enough to need to do that.
I have a sneaking feeling she might be immortal!

Catherine: I have a question:
Why does the writer say, "Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (of course)"?
Why should Elinor be an author that automatically springs to the minds of the readers of this article? Is the article's writer a fan of the Chalet books? I know she later mentions 'The famous Chalet School series', or something.

DramaPrefect: She mentions right at the beginning "two diehard fans of the Chalet School stories" I took the bit you mean as a "of course...they would publish their favourites" referencing back to the beginning. Though don't know if your average newspaper reader would have heard of the CS, let alone who it was by Very Happy

Aquabird: As a teenager, I am unfortunately inclined to agree that a lot of my generation just wouldn't be interested in the CS books because there is no sex/drugs/wish to rebel against authority in them.Crying or Very sad I was about 7 or 8 when I started reading Enid Blyton, and my mum used to read Malory Towers to me when I was even younger. I think I was about 12 when I got my first CS book, and I remember thinking that it was a lot different from the books I was used to, but I still really liked it. I looked in the school library and found one -Peggy, which isn't there now- and the local library didn't have any. Evil or Very Mad
re not being able to afford the books, also sadly true. I was only able to get a few recently because I came into a small fortune (well, to me anyway Wink) at the start of the summer and even then I had to go to a special bookshop in Edinburgh to find them. They're so hard to find nowadays, especially the hardbacks, yet my dad says he used to see loads of them (of course, as soon as I start looking for them they vanish Rolling Eyes).

DramaPrefect: I know exactly what you mean!
I remember when I was little, about to go on holiday and being taken to the bookshop to pick a holiday read. I said in front of a couple of shelves of CS pbs "Oh I shouldn't buy a Chalet School book - I just read them from the library". I was eventually talked into buying Exile, but when I think of how much easier to collect them it would have been if I'd bought the things when I was young!

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