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Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8106
Author:  Liss [ Fri Jul 09, 2010 10:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
I'm just reading Bluestockings, by Jane Robinson (about the history of women's fight for university education; an excellent read - highly recommended), and I wondered if anyone had any recs for Girlsown-esque novels set in universities? Surely there must be such a thing? I've read Jean Webster's books (and Gaudy Night, :wink: ), but not really come across anything else. Any suggestions?
Author:  JB [ Sat Jul 10, 2010 6:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
Here are some from the Encyclopeadia of Girls' School Stories:

A Sweet Girl Graduate - LT Meade
The Girls of Merton College

A College Girl - Mrs George De Horne Vaizey

A Newnham Friendship - Alice Stronach

Hilary, the Story of a College Girl - Mrs Sinclair Stevenson

The Scholarship Girl at Cambridge - Josephine Elder

The book says "here the genre appears to end".
Author:  Alison H [ Sat Jul 10, 2010 6:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
Would Anne of the Island count?
Author:  Joey [ Sat Jul 10, 2010 9:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
There's Patty Goes to College by Jean Webster, who wrote Daddy-Long-Legs. And of course, Daddy-Long-Legs itself is set at a women's university.

Not quite GO, but at least partly about friendship between young girls: Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann and A Share of the World by Andrea Newman are both set at university, the first in the 1920s and the second in the 60s. One of the things that interesting about reading both is how very different uni is in those two decades, and how the protagonists don't even seem to be the same age.
Author:  abbeybufo [ Sat Jul 10, 2010 9:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
One of Gladys Mitchell's mysteries is set in a girls' PE college, if that's of interest ... trouble is I can't remember what it's called :hiding:
Author:  cestina [ Sat Jul 10, 2010 12:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
abbeybufo wrote:
One of Gladys Mitchell's mysteries is set in a girls' PE college, if that's of interest ... trouble is I can't remember what it's called :hiding:

Laurels are Poison.....

ETA One of A.S.Byatt's Frederica Quartet books is set in Cambridge - to quote Wiki: "The quartet describes mid-20th-century Britain and Frederica's life as a young female intellectual studying at Cambridge, at a time when women were heavily outnumbered by men at that university....." I think it must be Still Life, the second one in the quartet
Author:  MaryR [ Sat Jul 10, 2010 2:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
There's May Sarton's The Small Room, which deals with plagiarism at university, as seen through the eyes of a new young female lecturer (or whatever they are termed in US! :D ).
Author:  Jenefer [ Sat Jul 10, 2010 2:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey is set in a PE college

I would second Joey's suggestion of Dusty Answer and A Share of the World

Probably not GO but Braided Lives by Marge Piercy is based on the author's time at Michigan. On a lighter note, Class Reunion by Rona Jaffe is about Radcliffe
Author:  Catrin [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 11:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
I'm struggling through the Frederica quartet - currently on page 60 of book 1 - and finding it horribly uninspiring.

There's always Sweet Valley University . . .

But this is a genre which I think there would be huge interest in. I can't understand why there isn't more of it, even outside GO - fiction seems to go straight from school to the Sophie Kinsella type mid-twenties got-a-job stuff. I would love to write something set in the Oxford bubble; sadly a lack of inspiration, knowledge of punctuation and creativity are holding me back.
Author:  cestina [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 12:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
Catrin wrote:
I'm struggling through the Frederica quartet - currently on page 60 of book 1 - and finding it horribly uninspiring.


:lol: I'm only on page 21 and having the same problem....you mean it doesn't get any better?
Author:  JB [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 12:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
cestina wrote:
Catrin wrote:
I'm struggling through the Frederica quartet - currently on page 60 of book 1 - and finding it horribly uninspiring.


:lol: I'm only on page 21 and having the same problem....you mean it doesn't get any better?


I gave up and donated mine to the church fete.
Author:  cestina [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 12:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
JB wrote:
cestina wrote:
Catrin wrote:
I'm struggling through the Frederica quartet - currently on page 60 of book 1 - and finding it horribly uninspiring.


:lol: I'm only on page 21 and having the same problem....you mean it doesn't get any better?


I gave up and donated mine to the church fete.

Hmm, perhaps I'll just move to The Children's Book - I was trying to ease my way into reading Byatt......
Author:  JB [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 12:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
I do like Possession but i did skip the fairy tale/poetry bits the second time around.
Author:  abbeybufo [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 1:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
I enjoyed The Virgin in the Garden - which I came upon by chance many years ago - and although I read the others afterwards I didn't find them as engaging.

Agree about Possession, though I did it the other way round - skipping the poetry chapterheads first time round for the story, then reading them properly on the re-read to see how they fitted.
Author:  Kathy_S [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 2:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
Women's college stories (University in UK parlance) were very popular here. One of my sisters reports there was even an exhibit at Bryn Mawr recently and was amused that it incluced some of the same books I own.

I first encountered the college genre through my mother's set of the Beverly Gray College Mystery Series (1934-1955), of which only the first four volumes (freshman through senior) were set in the school. They alternate between college life in which the most dastardly happenings are smoking, cheating (with false accusation of course) and conniving for a part in the class play, and mysteries of the haunted house, kidnapped by gypsies, jewel theft variety. Of course there are then another 21 volumes, in which the college friends have careers, adventures, etc. An earlier series lacking the mysteries stars Betty Wales (1904-1911, but also reprinted later. I'm still trying to figure out if they were altered beyond the illustrations.) Jane Allen (1917-1920) is basketball mad, but also deals with homesickness and dishonorable rivals. Her first two volumes, Jane Allen of the Sub Team and Jane Allen, Right Guard seem to me to be written by a different (and more classic) author than Jane Allen, Junior, in which most of the characters from the first two vanish into the blue. There are a number of other series with which I'm not as familiar. For example, Marjorie Dean (1917-1922) has four volumes of high school followed by four of college.
Author:  MaryR [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 4:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
cestina wrote:
Hmm, perhaps I'll just move to The Children's Book - I was trying to ease my way into reading Byatt......


I've just started that this week, Gil - and am already struggling, rather. I can't decide if I really find the characters sympathetic or not.....
Author:  AnneM [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 4:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
Amanda Cross (pseudonym for Carolyn Heilbrun, professor of humanities at Columbia) wrote a number of detective stories starring Kate Fansler, a professor of literature in New York. They usually had some kind of academic, college context.
Author:  cestina [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 5:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
AnneM wrote:
Amanda Cross (pseudonym for Carolyn Heilbrun, professor of humanities at Columbia) wrote a number of detective stories starring Kate Fansler, a professor of literature in New York. They usually had some kind of academic, college context.

Oh goodness yes, forgot all about her. Great detective stories too.....
Author:  fraujackson [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 5:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
MaryR wrote:
cestina wrote:
Hmm, perhaps I'll just move to The Children's Book - I was trying to ease my way into reading Byatt......


I've just started that this week, Gil - and am already struggling, rather. I can't decide if I really find the characters sympathetic or not.....


I found it hard to get into - took me about 100 pages. Mind you, I gave up after about 200 (though to be fair I wasn't feeling very well at the time.)

I tend to find Byatt hard going at the best of times - almost feel as if I don't know 'how' to read her, if that makes sense (what's the worldview I'm meant to take from/ see the plot through the book ?)
Author:  cestina [ Wed Jul 14, 2010 8:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
Bit OT, sorry - but I keep being told (by people whose opinion I value) that The Children's Book is great.

Has anyone read it?
Author:  Tor [ Thu Jul 15, 2010 9:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
I really enjoyed Possession (though I mostly skipped the poems!) - found it a real page turner (rather than a literary masterpiece...!). However, I just stumbled across the digested classics series in the guardian - which are painfully close to the mark. The one for Possession is spot on - even though I stand by my recommendation of it!
Author:  Catrin [ Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Seeking recommendations for girlsowny fic about university
:D at the Guardian review. I enjoyed Possession too, but the Virgin in the Garden reads like some of the worse John Fowles books.

The other book which has a college background but isn't GO-ish is The Secret History by Donna Tartt - I found it had the same momentum about it.
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