Jane Steps Out

by Ethel Talbot

Genres: School Stories

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

A prolific English children's author, known primarily for her girls' school stories, Ethel Mary Talbot was born in 1880, in Sutton Coldfield. She was the daughter of Hugh Talbot, and his wife, Margaret Ellen Turrell, committed members of the Plymouth Brethren, and had at least eight sisters and one brother. The family moved frequently, and little is known of Talbot's early years, or her education. As an adult, she settled in Edinburgh, where she shared a house with her friend and fellow school story author E.M. de Foubert, from 1914 to 1916. Talbot remained in Edinburgh until the 1930s, at which point she moved to London. During WWII she moved to Hayward's Heath, where she died in 1944.

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane may be all alone in the world, but that doesn’t stop her from determining to ‘step out’ in pursuit of the house in a family picture. Readers of Ethel Talbot may be surprised at how realistically she portrays a postwar Britain of sad boarding houses and villages where old country houses are left to moulder away, and it’s rare to find an author of this kind of book as appreciative of the appeal of America and well-paid jobs at film studios as of the charms of an older way of life. But of course it’s Ethel Talbot so family secrets, mysteries that baffle our heroine but anyone else would have cleared up in a second, and of course ellipsis after ellipsis feature strongly. One of Talbot’s more interesting late books, not least because of the metamorphosis of a stammering young hiker into the romantic lead.