The School Story in Australian Literary Culture

Apart from examining what Australian school stories reveal about Australian schoolboys and schoolgirls and the school world, the place of Australian school stories in Australian literary culture can be examined. The career of an author is studied briefly as well as the process of writing a school story from conception to publication using the example of Mavis Thorpe Clark’s boys’ school story Hatherly’s First Fifteen. The reception and consumption of Australian school stories is analysed using a range of contemporary responses, from public opinion to reading habits.

Authors of Australian school stories ranged from teachers and headmistresses, medical missionaries, to professional authors. Authors can be divided into two groups: those who worked as authors for a career, and those who had another career, profession or occupation. The first group includes authors Mary Grant Bruce and Ethel Turner who edited Children’s Pages in major weekly newspapers and wrote over thirty novels each, and significant journalists such as D. Lindsay Thompson, J. H. M. Abbott and Louise Mack. The second group includes teachers such as R. G. Jennings, and Constance Mackness. There were fewer professional children’s authors in Australia compared to Britain. The most prolific Australian children’s authors were able to have an extensive publishing career, namely Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce. Women writers were more likely to write professionally for children. Some supported their family through writing. Lillian Pyke became a widow in 1917 and published roughly one novel a year for the remainder of her life to support and educate her family, but found it a "long hard struggle" (Meyer 138). Ethel Turner often aided her sister, Lilian, and her family, with the income obtained from her writing. The lack of professional authors influenced the resulting style of school stories. Often stories were set or based on real schools. 17 of the 28 authors published only a single school story. Roughly half of the authors who had at least two school stories published wrote titles which formed part of a series, school or otherwise.

The process from conception to publication of a school story can be illustrated using the example of Mavis Thorpe Clark’s boys’ school story, Hatherly’s First Fifteen. This aspect of literary history is often neglected due to the lack of available records and evidence. Ward, Lock & Co. who published novels by Bruce, Turner, Pyke and many other Australian children’s authors, lost many of their records in a London air raid in 1940 (Lees and Macintyre 440). Only fragmentary correspondence exists in Bruce’s and Turner’s papers held in libraries, meaning details about Australian school story authors’ publishing careers often remains vague.¹ The researchers of The Encyclopaedia of Girls’ School Stories commented on the difficulty of researching authors and their publishing careers, describing the rare discovery of the correspondence of author, Evelyn Smith, "the only substantial correspondence known of any school story writer" (Clare 164).

Australian author, Mavis Thorpe Clark, detailed her experiences in writing her first novel in her autobiography, Trust the Dream, which provides an illuminating insight into the publication of Hatherly’s First Fifteen, a rare example of an Australian children’s author’s perspective on publishing in the early twentieth century. Clark wrote her first full-length book when she was just fifteen and still a pupil at the Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne. Peggy’s Adoption was sent to publishers, Whitcombe & Tombs, who suggested Mavis contact Mr Edward A. Vidler, the secretary of the Institute of Arts and Literature. Changing the name to Peggy’s Rival the manuscript was then sent to other publishers including the Religious Tract Society, but rejected. She decided to return to the immediate world of home and school: "my ambition now was to write a novel for boys, with sport and manliness, and stirring deeds on the footy field" (53). She wrote the story in two to three months making a chart and marking off 1000 words a day. To gain an understanding of the sport which was to feature in her story, Mavis used Bill Arnott, a Scottish rugby player, whose family came from the same Scottish town as her father and who stayed with the Clarks in Australia. The pair played the sporting scenes on the dining room table using match sticks for players (57). She consulted the doctor of her older sister, Dr McMahon, on how sight could be restored to sixteen-year-old Bob in the story (57-58). Just One Term, as the manuscript was titled, was given to Mr Vidler who submitted it to Angus & Robertson who rejected the manuscript stating:

We are returning Just One Term. Opinions are divided about it. Our reader urges
rejection, our bookseller adviser (who does not pretend to criticism, but simply
booksellerises) thinks that it would do alright. If the writer of this letter
had time to read the manuscript, he would arbitrate but unfortunately that is
physically impossible - he can’t find the time. So we are sending it back and
hope, for the author’s sake, that the bookseller is right. (Angus and Robertson
in Trust the Dream 55).

Later it was accepted by Whitcombe and Tombs and Mavis was offered 30 pounds for the complete rights. Authors could sell the copyright outright or receive an advance and an amount of royalties. Ethel Turner, for example, received 15 pounds and 2.5 percent royalties for Seven Little Australians (Niall 172). The title, Just One Term, was changed by the publishers to Hatherly’s First Fifteen. This was a common practice. Lillian Pyke’s school story, Squirmy and Bubbles, also published by Whitcombe and Tombs, was originally titled A Twin in Paradise (McLaren 182). Hatherly’s First Fifteen was published in England under the name of M. R. Clark, as Mavis had submitted it under her name Mavis Rose Clark. Mavis recalls she received little correspondence from the publishers:

I had no further contact with the publishers. There was no proof reading, no
discussion of the change of title or the abbreviation of my name. Nor was there
an accounting so I have no knowledge of how many copies were sold or how many editions were printed. (56)

Mavis recalls that there was a long delay between acceptance and publication of the book, and eventually she received six copies by post. Exchanges of correspondences between the London and Australian branches of Oxford University Press, for example, took three months until airmail between Australia and England was introduced in 1932 allowing quicker communication (Eyre, Oxford in Australia 23). Mavis saw a copy of Hatherly’s First Fifteen in Robertson’s Elizabeth Street shop in Melbourne and when the sales assistant told her that the author was an eighteen-year-old Melbourne girl, Mavis replied "That’s me!" (58).

As Clark’s experience reveals, publishers played a significant role in the growth of Australian school stories. 29 of the 55 Australian school stories were published in Australia. Ward, Lock & Co. published 13 of the 26 which were published by British publishing houses. Oxford University Press was one publisher that established a branch in Australia. Prior to the Second World War Oxford University Press (OUP) had not conducted an extensive program of printing titles in Australia. The war meant British publishers faced severe paper rationing and consequently there was a shortage of books in print and as a result the Australian branch was allowed to publish its own titles (Eyre, Oxford in Australia 25). The influx of American servicemen was one of the impetuses for an increased demand for Australian novels. OUP published Australian editions of Captain W.E. Johns’ Biggles books and Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Dimsie school stories which sold well (Eyre, Oxford in Australia 27). Other publishers who began a program of issuing Australian reprints of popular foreign children’s authors included Angus & Robertson who published a number of Enid Blyton titles including the Naughtiest Girl in the School series, and Dymocks who published many titles in Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School series.

OUP also began a substantial local publishing programme publishing Australian authors (Eyre, Oxford in Australia 27). Authors published included Dora Joan Potter, Keane Wilson, and New Zealand author, Clare Mallory’s school stories. This growth in Australian publishing was in part responsible for the resurgence in Australian school stories. All of the school stories published in the 1940s were published by Australian publishers, mostly OUP, but also smaller publisher such as Jons, and Bilson-Honey. These children’s books were very popular at a time when they were otherwise very difficult to obtain through importation (Eyre, Oxford in Australia 28). This is evident with many of Potter’s stories being reprinted. With Wendy at Winterton School ran to four editions.

To gauge the public and private reception of a particular genre can be difficult and in this case the area has been broadened slightly to include British school stories. In terms of official responses, in Great Britain, some Headmistresses went so far as to ban school stories, for example, the Headmistress of St Paul’s School in 1936 decreed a public burning of all Angela Brazil books (Avery 199-200). Australian Headmistress and author, Constance Mackness, undoubtedly did not disapprove of school stories as she herself wrote four. The famous Headmaster of Wesley College, L. A. Adamson, made a habit of collecting school stories, although:

He thought it was extremely difficult for anyone to write a true school story.
In the first place he did not think one could really make a plot out of the
school years of a boy. It was easier to show the development of a boy’s
character during his years at school. The more modern English school stories
also dealt with sides of school life which did not touch Australian schools at
all. (Meyer 116)

As for the readers of school stories, children could obtain books from libraries, as presents or awards, or buy them. Various libraries including public or municipal libraries, school libraries and private libraries stocked children’s novels. The Library at the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School stocked school stories and reported that they were very popular with the Lower School: "sad to relate they are always clamouring for school stories, and as they are few in proportion to the demand we are not always able to satisfy their wants" (Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School Magazine 1921:6). Books were sold at stationers, newsagents, large books stores such as the Queensland and Sydney Book Depots, department stores and Church-run book shops. Children obtained books as presents or Sunday school or school awards. Many original editions of children’s books still contain presentation plates which detail the recipient and the award for which it was given. Because of the popular market, publishers introduced ‘Rewards’ series, uniformly designed series of books under a series name such as OUP’s New Ensign Series. Constance Mackness’ Miss Pickle was reprinted in this series.

Lyons and Taksa’s Australian Readers Remember: An Oral History of Reading 1890-1930 included a section in which Australian readers discuss their childhood reading. The authors concluded that the popularity of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong stories signify the "Australianization of the reading public" (Lyons & Taksa 89). 28 percent of the 60 participants interviewed were familiar with the British weekly, the Magnet, and its famous schoolboy, Billy Bunter (Lyons & Taksa 92). In the 1957 study Growing up in an Australian City: A Study of Adolescents in Sydney, the reading habits of Sydney adolescents were examined. When the participants were asked to rank their 6 favourite genres from 11 different types, school stories were read, but ranked behind other genres such as adventure stories, and were more popular with younger adolescents. The authors found that school stories ranked second most popular for 13 year old girls, equal third for 14 year old girls and equal fifth for 15 year old girls. For boys, the school story was far less popular, with the Biggles stories featuring prominently in the lists of books read. The school story ranked eighth for 13 and 14 year old boys, and equal ninth for 15 year old boys (Connell 196).

For Audrey Baxendale, who started as a new girl at St. Hilda’s School in Southport, Queensland, in 1917, a love of Angela Brazil school stories led to a friendship with another new girl (Baxendale in Hughes 50). In 1930 the boarders at Toowoomba Grammar were having E F Benson’s school story, David Blaize, read to them on Saturday evenings, and found it was "only occasionally ultra-English", and a "natural enough story of Prepatory and Secondary school life" (Toowoomba Grammar School Magazine and Old Boys’ Register Vol XXI May 1930 No 1, p 15) .


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¹ Ethel Turner’s dairies, which have been published, however do provide extensive information on her writing career and some of the trials and financial matters pertaining to writing.