Cover of Behind the Chalet SchoolBehind the Chalet School

Helen McClelland
1996, 320pp, ISBN 978 0 9524680 2 8
£14.99 (includes p&p in the UK)

Or £6.90 (inc VAT)/ $9.99 US plus sales tax as an ebook for the Kindle - click here to buy directly via Amazon

Little was known about Elinor M. Brent-Dyer until after her death, when Helen McClelland originally began her researches. Since the first edition of her biography was published in 1981, new information has made it possible to give a much fuller picture of Brent-Dyer's early life and to fill in some of the gaps that remained in her story.

Many sections of the book have been not only revised but expanded; more details are included about Chalet School locations; and a whole new chapter covers Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's birth centenary celebrations and the amazing growth of the Chalet School legend during the 1990s. One or two old questions have been answered and some "missing" people have been found, including Elinor's vanished half-brother. The book also includes several new illustrations and an appendix on the sometimes problematic chronology of the Chalet School series.

Photograph of a woman reading Behind the Chalet School"Documentary research and many interviews with friends and relatives of Elinor Brent-Dyer are put together in an absorbing book which presents her in the round, her unattractive traits and her passionate ambitions, her abundant energy and her eccentricities. Students of children's literature will be especially grateful for the careful analysis of readers' opinions and fan letters . . . The fact that the biographer has not tried to sum up or dogmatise does her credit: the facts she has amassed are used to delineate a fallible, complex and fascinating person."
- Margery Fisher on the first edition

"Lovers of Brent-Dyer who do not already have a copy of Behind the Chalet School will obviously want to buy this book. But it can be heartily recommended to everyone: quite apart from the masses of new material, it has been beautifully produced by the Bettany Press, and its larger print size and higher quality paper makes it far easier to read than the original"
- Sue Sims, Folly


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