I was just thinking about whether when you read the books you can tell what time they were set in - obviously the ones which are set during the second world war have lots of references to what was going on at the time, and then after references to them not being able to go back to the same area, but is there anything else? Do the girls ever listen to music of the time, like Elvis or the Beatles or something, or go see any films which are mentioned by name? Or are they more just set in an unspecified year?

I don't seem to have as an encyclopedic knowledge of the books as some people on here have, so there might be something hugely obvious which I've forgotten about!

I don't think there are many things which tie the books to specific years - although as I said in another thread the other day, I think there are probably references that we don't get today, such as the reason why Ted Humphries needed to leave Cologne.

I do think things like hairstyles, food and travel indicate that the books aren't contemporary.

Girls having long hair and 'putting it up' at 18 was outdated even when EBD was writing the later books.

I think it's in Richenda that Nanny serves tinned peaches with evaporated milk as a special treat. I don't know whether anyone still uses evaporated milk like that today, but in the 1950s and 1960s tinned peaches and evap was absolutely a treat. The thought of it takes me right back to my childhood, I can almost taste it now!

The fact that no-one travelled by air in the early books, everyone went by train or ship. Even in the later books, people didn't fly between Switzerland and the UK as a matter of course, only when there were exceptional reasons.

And of course the fact that all the adults smoked and no-one thought anything of it.

I think we see changes during the course of the series, too - the fact that by the later books people did sometimes travel by air, they went to the cinema, listened to the radio, made transatlantic telephone calls, none of which happened in the Tyrol books. We even hear that they have washing machines instead of the laundry being done by hand!

When I found a copy of Three Go in my mum's bookcase and read it for the first time, I couldn't tell which war it was that had caused Verity Anne to refuse to speak German. I had previously read some of the Tyrol books, but couldn't discern when they were set either to give me a clue. Perhaps there were indications I'd have picked up on if I'd been older, but it certainly wasn't obvious for a nine year old.

There are the unavoidable things, e.g. absence of mobile phones and the internet and so on .

There's a mention of the Prince of Wales (later the Duke of Windsor) in Jo of, a reference to someone (Grizel?) wanting to be like a famous tennis player of the time, various references to "Bubbles crops" which don't really work for people who don't remember/know of the Pears soap advert, and a few mentions of products/brand names.

I think the only really specific things other than the Second World War are a reference to the Spanish Civil War in New and references to the Mau Mau rebellion in relation to the Scotts. A lot of very big events which the characters must have discussed and been affected by, such as the Abdication and Indian independence, aren't mentioned.

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

But they would havae worked at the time, and I think, somehow, that that works in terms of dating the books. They're not written as amorphous stories where it's impossible to identify the date of publishing, but a mere mention of something like a 'bubbles crop' would, at the time, locate it pretty specifically. And while that doesn't help us later, it does give a flavour to the books, even if we're not able to work out exact dates. Does that make sense?

I do think that the War books are the most brilliant in terms of expressing through story what RL (well, CS-RL, anyway!) was like at that time.



I think you have mainly Armadas, miss_spookiness? If you have you might not have come across the whole smoking thing. I found it quite shocking (oh, how quickly we move on!) to read of Mistresses and doctors smoking as a matter of course, so casually. And that certainly gives the books an other-time feel.

Most of the books aren't dateable by any specific events - except, as people have said, the War. There is a flavour, like the 'Bubbles' comment about Gay that I guess would tell most people that they're set or were written in the earlier 20th century. They also get even less dateable as the series go on and they get stuck in a sort of nostalgic 1950s. I wonder if this was partly to do with EBD getting older and also not being in contact so much with girls as she had been in earlier years, so didn't tend to keep abreast of social changes so much.

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"And I'm sure there was blood in the gutter from somebody's head, or else it was the sunset in a puddle."

So This is School! - Mary-Dorothy Devine - Interview with a Heroine

Also, the later books aren't written in real time. Prefects was published in 1970, but as the triplets were 18 going on 19 it would only have been 1958 by CS time. I know Antonia Forest sticks to real time, but I find that totally confusing - people born in 1939 being 18/19 in 1970 would throw me totally!

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

Yes, I think the Swiss books, especially, become much more generic. They have very little historical context at all. And given that hair-styles and clothes of, say, the 60s were so highly specific, it's odd that th ebooks do lose so little essence of the times in which they were (supposed to be) set.

But Alison's point explains a possible why of this convincingly - that the books weren't set in the same time frame in which they were written. And then Abi's point of an aging Elinor added to this, and perhaps that explains it all fully?

I also think she simply increasingly disapproved of the way 'the young' were tending by the time she wrote the later Swiss books. She was always old-fashioned in certain respects, with even young, dynamic characters like Madge explicitly favouring old-fashioned 'continental' ways, feudal familial situations, 'traditional' methods of child-rearing (at least some of the time). But you can just about fit that into Madge's character in the 1930s, whereas it's far stranger to have breezy, modern, eternal-schoolgirl unshockable Joey behaving like a disgusted elderly Dowager Duchess when confronted with beatniks on a train in something set in the 1950s!

Like others, I find the pre-war books far more 'historical' in setting than the Swiss books. We have the references to Hitler, the Spanish civil war, the problems in Ireland, old Austrian currency, detailed descriptions of the problems associated with travelling such 'great' distances, the reference to English princesses, etc. I dare say EBD wasn't aiming to have her books able to be dated, but it's certainly possible to get a feel for the time they were written, if not "set".

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The writer's credo: 'Sometimes you've got to sacrifice the things you like' (Delta Goodrem - Born To Try)

Well in fairness to Joey (and EBD) I think that would have been a fairly normal reaction to beatniks in the 1950s. One drew one's skirts away, so to speak......

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Cestina's dolls houses - Open at last!

I just wrote a brilliant post - one which would have gone down in the history of the CCB as the Most Dazzling post ever written.

And I've lost it. So no-one will ever know anything of the brilliance of what I wrote and history will be poorer for it.

And of course, I can't remember the details of it all ...

I do find the sheer intensity of her disgust and the manner in which she expresses it a bit out of character, though. No 'good' central EBD character was ever going to be pro-beatnik, or even neutral, given EBD's own attitudes as expressed throughout the series (the very idea!) but I could more easily imagine Joey rolling her eyes and muttering asides about the young and their silly experiments than I could see someone as unshockable as Joey suddenly starting to go on about good tubbings and nannies, or whatever she says (or for someone who remains an 'eternal schoolgirl' and who was such an untidy, ink-stained teenager herself to see a bit of dirt as evidence of a revolting lack of self-respect).

But I do think that episode is indicative of part of the reason at least for the lack of specificity of the later books, if that makes sense, and why the Platz becomes something of a never-never land where it's always about 1950 and girls wear Nice Cotton Frocks and are Dainty.

When was Hitler first mentioned? KB could tell us, but I seem to remember that Joey mentions him in passing some time before the 2WW and I wondered what it would have meant to readers of the time?

Elinor writes his name in with no clue of what was going to happen because of him. We have the advantage of having seen what happened and understanding his significance, but would this have been the case for readers of the time? It's that kind of detail that makes the books, until the Swiss era, so compelling for me. It's like reading a book as history actually happens, and this is what I love.

I've learnt a lot of social history through the early Chalet School books (well, I think I have!), and what it was like to live at the time of huge historical significance, although of course that wouldn't have been known at the time.

And the early books were being writtten as history was actually unfurling - Elinor had no idea, of course, of what would happen next, and for me this gives the early books a great immediacy.

I can't think of any other series of books where we see such major events happening in real time like that. First the school had to leave Austria, and then Elinor innocently moved it to Guernsey, presumably with plenty of Guernsey-specific storylines in mind, only to have to move it again when the Channel Islands were occupied. Then, in Island, she starts talking about a move back to Austria, only to have that idea scuppered when relations between the Soviets and the Western Allies deteriorated and it took so long to sort out the situation there. The poor woman must have been gnashing her teeth when all the Guernsey plans were ruined after just half a book, but it makes very interesting reading for us!

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

It's in New, and very casual it is (which I think is why I love it):



New was published in 1938, the year of the Munich Agreement, so I'm sure his name would have meant a great deal to people at the time. That said, one wonders what the intended readers of the series would have made of it, but perhaps she hoped they would ask their parents. We know how keen she was to have people aware of what was happening.

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The writer's credo: 'Sometimes you've got to sacrifice the things you like' (Delta Goodrem - Born To Try)

Oh, that's interesting! I'd missed the earlier ref to Hitler. Things like that do give an excellent period flavour to the earlier books, though I agree that is lost in the later books: the school and characters do seem to go into a sort of stasis in Switzerland.

It would be interesting to know the precise dates of publication. The Munich crisis was in late summer 1938, and for a time people in the UK really did think the country was about to go to war. Jo's passing reference to Hitler would have a very different impact then compared to earlier in the year, or in 1937 - when EBD presumably wrote it. And of course if New was published later than March 1938 EBD's readers already knew about the Anschluss.

Similarly with Exile, published in 1940. If it was later than June, France had fallen and readers knew that the school couldn't stay in Guernsey, even while they were reading about Madge and Jem in Austria talking about taking the School and San there.

Mmm - good points. Do we know when the books were actually written as opposed to published, then?

Yes thats right - I've got one GGB book (Joey and Co In Tirol) and I really noticed the references to smoking, probably because they weren't in the other books I've got. I found myself reading it and trying to work out how they could have taken the references out without ruining the story!! For example there is one bit when Joey smokes to get rid of the flies around them - maybe they would have taken all of that out!



I didn't think of that actually, but thats a good point. I suppose she couldn't put anything which would have made it identifiable to a certain time if it was written about an earlier time.