ABSTRACT
In a radio programme broadcast in the 1980s on the influence of books read in childhood, Lord Goodman, a celebrated lawyer and pillar of the British establishment, proudly announced that whatever he had become, he owed to Angela Brazil.1 It is a startling admission, but one which would have found resonance with thousands of like-minded readers who had grown up in the early years of the century – although few of them are likely to have achieved such public eminence as Arnold Goodman. The name Angela Brazil is even now synonymous with a complete and discrete genre of children’s literature: the girls’ school story. Even those who have never picked up a Brazil novel in their lives will recognise the archetypal characters: the plucky prefect, the madcap heroine, the spirited head girl. All these inhabit the closed, arcane and sometimes thrilling world of the fictional girls’ boarding school. It is a world that Brazil to a large extent created. It is also a world that has entered the popular imagination, has given rise to countless imitators and parodists and has put under its spell succeeding generations of girls and women (to say nothing of prominent lawyers). The charm of the fictive English public school continues to fascinate readers of all ages and backgrounds, as the runaway success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, set in Hogwarts Academy, confirms. To understand the enigma of its enduring appeal, and to appreciate the unique contribution made by Angela Brazil to a form which was to dominate girls’ reading habits for nearly threequarters of a century, we need to go back to some of its earliest audiences.
