Head of the Lower School

by Dorothea Moore, Charles Edmund Brock (Illustrator)

Jocelyn 'Joey' Graham wins a scholarship to the prestigious Redlands Girls' School, in Lincolnshire. After an inauspicious start, she thoroughly enjoys her first term at the school, with its many alarums and excursions, including mists, floods and spies in post-War England. This is an exciting story, detailing how Joey wins through in the end.

Genres: School Stories

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Born in Islington in 1880, Dorothea Mary Moore was the daughter of the Rev. William Moore, and his wife Alice Montague Pope. Her father had the curacy at Romsey from 1881-82, and at Horningsham from 1882-85; and was the priest at Kingston Deverill from 1885-99, at St. Savior's, Highbury from 1899-1912, and at Mereworth from 1913-31. Moore was educated at Godolphin School, Salisbury, and at Cheltenham Ladies' College; and, being lame as a girl, turned to writing. She was living in Aberdeen in 1909, most likely with her brother, who was in medical school there

Two of Moore's plays - My Lady Bellamy and Grey Mask - were performed by a professional troupe, the Alexander Maclean Company, and it is possible that she toured with them herself. She served in the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) during World War I, and settled in Eastbourne afterward, keeping house for her doctor brother. Moore was a prolific author, producing many books for young people - girls' school stories, Ruritanian fantasies, historical novels, and tales of Girl Guiding - the last of which dovetailed with another of her great interests. Moore herself was a Guider from 1918 through 1927, and ran a Brownie pack from 1918 to 1928, and she is credited with writing the very first Guiding story for girls, Terry the Girl Guide. She died in London in 1933.

Reviews

[Camille · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel is a bit of a mixed bag. As another reviewer said, it's very of its period. It was published during WW1 and you have a lot of German bashing.

It starts well. The heroine, Joey, is a little firecracker. She reminded me of Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables at times.
But that's pretty much it. The story kept getting less and less believable as it progresses.

Why on Earth would a German agent go undercover in a rural girl's school and try to poison the water supply?! What is the point?
And no one realised he was German and had no problem believing he was French despite an actual French member of staff in the school, an Alsacian no less. Like, did she never try to speak to him in French and find out he wasn't?
And then the father who was supposedly dead in Germany is somehow alive, and we find out because some random in a tower (another poor Alsacian of course) had met him and then meets his daughter?
Whatever. It's just totally unbelievable.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very of it’s period.