ABSTRACT
If much of the popular girls’ fi ction between the wars is remarkably like the boys’ fi ction, this is hardly surprising given that most of the magazine serials and some of the books were written by the same authors. One of the most famous girls’ schools, Cliff House, was invented by Frank Richards, and features a character, Bessie Bunter, who is almost indistinguishable, apart from her pigtails, from Billy Bunter, Owl of the Remove. Richards began the Cliff House series in 1909, in response to letters from girl readers of Magnet, and in 1919 the series was moved to its own magazine, School Friend, advertised as “The Only Schoolgirls’ Paper in the World.” Richards wrote the stories under the pseudonym Hilda Richards, and later writers such as Horace Phillips, R. S. Kirkman, L. E. Ransome, and John Wheway also used female pseudonyms when they contributed further episodes to the series. The impression was given of a magazine written by women for girls, but in fact it was really little more than a perfunctory translation of a boys’ magazine.
