The School by the Sea

[1914]. First edition, first impression.  256pp, with a colour plate frontispiece and four further monochrome plates interleafed in text.  Pictorial cloth covers, illustrated front and spine, with gilt titles on spine.  Grey-green endpapers.  12mo.  Covers are a little soiled and discoloured, moderately rubbed and rounded on corners and spine ends with short nick in cloth at spine head.  Minor toning to text block edges.  Gift inscription, dated 1914, inked on the front free endpaper.  Gutter cracked between half title and frontispiece; some slight browning to page margins but generally internally neat and clean.  Firmly bound and square.  Attractive volume.

Angela Brazil’s classic story of a small girls’ school in Cornwall and the friends Deirdre Sullivan and Dulcie Wilcox.  Typically of Brazil’s stories, the novel shifts away from the moralistic tone of Victorian girls fiction, focussing more on camaraderie, independence and adventure.  Brazil helped to solidify the popularity of the British boarding school formula that later inspired writers such as Enid Blyton (Malory Towers) and Elinor Brent-Dyer (The Chalet School).