Collectors’ Notes: Collecting Vintage School Girl Stories

Plodding through cataloguing a new (to us) batch of books this afternoon, I came across a vintage girls’ school story by an author I didn’t recognise: The First Term at Northwood by Mary Cathcart Borer.  I wondered if it was part of a longer series, as so many school girl stories of that era were.  Sadly I didn’t find any more school stories (but they could be hiding beyond my ken) but I did find that Borer herself had quite a story!

Borer, a Londoner by birth, started her working life as a scientist, working at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum as a senior researcher; but she gave up her job when she married archeologist Oliver Humphrys Myers, and travelled with him under the auspices of the Egyptian Exploration Society to Luxor on the Nile.  The marriage didn’t last, but her experiences in Egypt inspired one of her novels, Taha, the Egyptian.  Her first novel, Kilango, had been completed while she was still at the Museum, and another two followed before the outbreak of World War Two: The Highcroft Mystery and The House with the Blue Door.

She also worked as a film, script and scenario writer.  During the war, in 1942, Borer joined Gaumont-British Instructional Films, writing propaganda films for the British Council and the Ministry of Information, her credits including Surgery in Chest Disease, Tom’s Ride and Sports Day (1943-44).  She was an occasional playwright too her most famous play co-written with Arnold Ridley, who achieved late celebrity status as Private Godfrey in Dad’s Army but was, before that, a well-known playwright: Tabitha (1955) is a comedy thriller about three old ladies who plan to poison their odious landlady; the impulse to murder deserts them at the last minute, so they are somewhat taken aback when the old landlady dies anyway.

As the list of her novels (below) reveals, she had enormous range and wrote for diverse audiences.  She also wrote a number of non-fiction works, mostly later in her career. Perhaps the most celebrated on these is her Illustrated Guide to London 1800, which was published in 1988 by Robert Hale.

Mary Cathcart Borer is also sometimes credited at Molly Myers and, the IMDb database suggests, the somewhat more unlikely Egan Storm.

The Wellcome Collection holds a photograph of  Mary Cathcart Borer.  I think she looks fiesty.

See all books by Mary Cathcart Borer at BookAddiction

Mary Cathcart Borer novels

Kalingo, illus. P. E. Fawkes. London, Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1936
Adventure in August. London, Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1937.
The Sinclair Family. London, Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 4 pts., 1937.
Taha the Egyptian, illus. Kathleen M. Blair. London, Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1937.
The Highcroft Mystery. London & New York, F. Warne & Co., 1939.
The House with the Blue Door. London, Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1939.
Bush Christmas (novelisation of the film). London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1947.
The First Term at Northwood. London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1948.
The Valley of the White Lake. London & New York, Frederick Warne & Co., 1948.
The Little Ballerina (novelisation of the film). London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1949.
The Secret Tunnel (novelisation of the film). London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1950.
Distant Hills. A tale of pioneering days in Africa. London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1951.
The Mystery of the Snakeskin Belt (novelisation of the film). London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1951.
The Last Load (novelisation of the film). London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1952.
The Mysterious Poacher, and The Lone Climber (novelisations of the films). London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1952.
Trapped by the Terror (novelisation of the film). London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1952.
The Birthday Present, illus. Sheila Connelly. London, George G. Harrap & Co., 1954.
The Boabab Tree. London & New York, Frederick Warne & Co., 1955.
The Dog and the Diamonds, illus. W. White. London, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1956.
Tim’s Donkey, illus. Sheila Connelly. London, Longmans, 1956.
The Dragon Remembered, illus. Val Biro. Leicester, Brockhampton Press, 1956 [1957].
The Quest of the Golden Eagle, illus. Robert Hodgson. London, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1957.
Aesop’s Fables, retold by Mary Cathcart Borer. London, Longmans, 1959.
Don Quixote, some of his adventures retold by Mary Cathcart Borer, illus. Pauline Baynes. London, Longmans, 1960.  Sophie and the Countess, illus. W. F. Phillips. London, George G. Harrap & Co., 1960.
Tales of King Arthur, illus. Will Nickless. London, Longmans, 1961.