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A Sweet Girl Graduate
Priscilla Peel forges a friendship with Maggie at St. Benet's College for Women, but it is threatened by false accusation. Never a seeker of popularity, Priscilla holds true to her noble character. But is she prepared for what it will cost her?
"A Sweet Girl Graduate is a vivid and detailed description of college life among a perfect bevy of young misses in the old English university town of Kingsdene. It follows the fortunes of a young Devonshire lass who goes away to college and finds herself among entirely different conditions of life and points of view than those that prevail in her own narrow village." -from: The Critic, Volume 16, 1891
Originally published in 1891 as A Sweet Girl Graduate, then reprinted in 1998 as Priscilla's Promise, part of Harvest House Publishers' "Victorian Bookshelf Series."
"A Sweet Girl Graduate is a vivid and detailed description of college life among a perfect bevy of young misses in the old English university town of Kingsdene. It follows the fortunes of a young Devonshire lass who goes away to college and finds herself among entirely different conditions of life and points of view than those that prevail in her own narrow village." -from: The Critic, Volume 16, 1891
Originally published in 1891 as A Sweet Girl Graduate, then reprinted in 1998 as Priscilla's Promise, part of Harvest House Publishers' "Victorian Bookshelf Series."
222 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1891
26 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
L.T. Meade
368 books53 followersMrs. L.T. Meade (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Toulmin Smith), was a prolific children's author of Anglo Irish extraction. Born in 1844, Meade was the eldest daughter of a Protestant clergyman, whose church was in County Cork. Moving from Ireland to London as a young woman, after the death of her mother, she studied in the Reading Room of the British Museum in preparation for her intended career as a writer, before marrying Alfred Toulmin Smith in September 1879.
The author of close to 300 books, Meade wrote in many genres, but is best known for her girls' school stories. She was one of the editors of the girls' magazine, Atalanta from 1887-93, and was active in women's issues. She died in 1914.
The author of close to 300 books, Meade wrote in many genres, but is best known for her girls' school stories. She was one of the editors of the girls' magazine, Atalanta from 1887-93, and was active in women's issues. She died in 1914.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 22, 2013
Left me enchanted and yearning to read more books from this period
May 21, 2018
A Sweet Girl Graduate is a story that will take you by surprise once you start reading because it is not the cute, innocent "chick lit" that one might expect and was so prevalent during Victorian and Edwardian times. Nope, this one is actually more as if someone today might mash up the story lines of Pretty In Pink and Mean Girls, with a tinge of gothic pathos for good measure. :-P
In A Sweet Girl Graduate, teenage Prisicilla Peel or "Prissie", is that all too familiar "girl from the wrong side of the tracks"; she's orphaned and living with her aunt and three younger sisters in a small community in Yorkshire, England. By some stroke of luck, her aunt and the local vicar manage to pool enough money together to send Priscilla to St. Benet's, an exclusive college for women in Devonshire for 3 years. Priscilla goes, planning on focusing on nothing but her studies - which turns out to be mainly Latin with an emphasis on Greek literature (and nowadays people pile into Business Administration classes!). Priscilla soon runs into the dilemma most first year college students hit - the realization that it takes some SERIOUS willpower to do nothing but study! Making her already unfamiliar environment even more bizarre and stressful is Priscilla learning that her room was the room of the enigmatic Anabel Lee, strangely a girl everyone loves to idolize but not really give any specific details about... and why are they talking about her in the past tense, Priscilla wonders??
Eventually Priscilla just gets fed up with all the mysterious talk and basically says "either spit the story our or shut the hell up ". Turns out Anabel Lee was formerly the most popular girl at St. Benet's (a place where the girls call themselves "inmates") and also the best friend of Maggie Oliphant, the reigning popularity queen. Anabel was of course everything nice: the most beautiful, the most glamorous, the best taste in everything, the kindest heart, the cheeriest personality.... and then she unfortunately dies of typhoid fever, leaving the entire school, and most particularly Maggie, who idolized her, devastated. In death, Anabel is put on a pedestal much like her Poe namesake. As Edgar Allan Poe famously said, "The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world."
Maggie is exposed to typhoid as well, but manages a recovery, though not fully as far as her spirit. Maggie, carries an immense amount of guilt around for being in love with Anabel's friend, Geoffrey, the most popular man in town (who, much to everyone's shock and disappointment, also develops a friendship with Priscilla, the "poor girl"). Maggie finds a second chance at a deeply meaningful friendship with Priscilla but it seems from every angle Priscilla is attacked for her lack of money and expensive luxuries in her dorm room. Everyone else has the best of furniture, linens, clothes... all paid for by indulgent parents,,, but no one seems to care too much about actual school attendance. Priscilla tries to do right by the people that worked so hard to give her a better shot in life but is blindsided by the vehement dislike of all these rich girls telling her she's not good enough to run in their circles. Maggie is cornered and questioned for her friendship with Priscilla. Even Maggie's popularity was a mystery to me - though she was one of the richest girls in the school, throughout the story she constantly seemed to be having what she called "one of her bad half-hours" (only they were coming around like clockwork) where she would bite someone's head off for no reason one minute, call them names, ridicule them and then in the next instance profess her undying love and luck in friendship with them! It struck me as if maybe Maggie was a closet bipolar.
" Maggie's mood scarcely puzzled them. She was so erratic that no one expected anything from her but the unexpected..."
Not to say that bipolar people don't need love too, they do, it was just a mystery to me that Priscilla being poor was unforgivable but the abuse Maggie showed her friends was just considered something of a personality quirk! I saw this behavior a number of times myself when I was in school and it didn't make any more sense back then. Though being a girl myself, I just gotta get this out - women are freakin' weird sometimes!!
The saddest scenes are when Priscilla tries to put differences aside, help these girls out when they get in a bind and finds that she's been led into traps specifically set up to publicly humiliate her. To this day, I am still amazed at how catty women can get sometimes over the most petty things! Case in point, one of the girls, Polly, another slightly less popular but comes from a family with money kind of girl, gets into some money trouble spending too much in the local shops (she bought a bunch of stuff on credit and couldn't pay it back and knew her parents wouldn't give her the money). This poor girl has to auction off her stuff to raise money again so her father won't find out her spending addiction. Well, the girls go nuts, like tigers at dinnertime at the zoo, and start fighting over who gets what of her stuff - before she's even organized the auction! The school does not approve of the auction, but doesn't find out about it until it's over, getting a bunch of girls in trouble, including Priscilla, who didn't buy anything but merely attended because her friend Maggie was there.
Much of the drama of the novel stems from this auction, where Maggie and Rosalind, a girl with a peculiarly strong hatred for Priscilla (which is intensified when Rosalind feels she's been replaced as Maggie's personal pet of a friend) get in a bidding war over Polly's sealskin coat and coral jewelry set.
Maggie doesn't understand Rosalind's behavior and in fueled defense of her friend, Prissie, Maggie bids on the coat and wins it (though she has no interest in owning it). She also bids on the coral jewelry, mainly just to drive up the bid that Rosalind would have to pay. Rosalind gets caught up in the bid and ends up bidding five pounds higher than she can actually afford. It's like an episode of Storage Wars! :-P Thus starts the real drama to the story - what cheap levels Rosalind will stoop to, to gather that extra five pounds... eventually putting together a scheme that sheds a particularly bad, and undeserved light on Priscilla. But karma wins out in the end
;-) Big fan of that girl, Karma lol.
Priscilla reminded me a lot of me my first year of college, before I had a healthy dose of the real world lol. Many of the conversations she has with teachers and friends I remember having at times. One in particular, a scene where Priscilla visits the vicar that helped send her to school, struck me as a sort of a mix of myself then and now:
I still struggle daily with finding my "bread and butter" path in life! And there have been times when I've said that I just need to pull my head out of my books, but in fact - those books are such a huge part of the person I've become today. They gave me a source of reason and teaching when nothing else was offered. They gave me peace in knowing that my feelings were not exclusive and I was not alone in days of suffering. As cheezy as it sounds, books also kept me believing in love and good people. If you don't have a source, any source, of hope and faith, what do you have??
That's one of the things that surprised and impressed me about this novel - the subtle mix of innocence, darkness, petty behavior, jealousies, conflicted emotions, guilt... it's all in here!
In A Sweet Girl Graduate, teenage Prisicilla Peel or "Prissie", is that all too familiar "girl from the wrong side of the tracks"; she's orphaned and living with her aunt and three younger sisters in a small community in Yorkshire, England. By some stroke of luck, her aunt and the local vicar manage to pool enough money together to send Priscilla to St. Benet's, an exclusive college for women in Devonshire for 3 years. Priscilla goes, planning on focusing on nothing but her studies - which turns out to be mainly Latin with an emphasis on Greek literature (and nowadays people pile into Business Administration classes!). Priscilla soon runs into the dilemma most first year college students hit - the realization that it takes some SERIOUS willpower to do nothing but study! Making her already unfamiliar environment even more bizarre and stressful is Priscilla learning that her room was the room of the enigmatic Anabel Lee, strangely a girl everyone loves to idolize but not really give any specific details about... and why are they talking about her in the past tense, Priscilla wonders??
Eventually Priscilla just gets fed up with all the mysterious talk and basically says "either spit the story our or shut the hell up ". Turns out Anabel Lee was formerly the most popular girl at St. Benet's (a place where the girls call themselves "inmates") and also the best friend of Maggie Oliphant, the reigning popularity queen. Anabel was of course everything nice: the most beautiful, the most glamorous, the best taste in everything, the kindest heart, the cheeriest personality.... and then she unfortunately dies of typhoid fever, leaving the entire school, and most particularly Maggie, who idolized her, devastated. In death, Anabel is put on a pedestal much like her Poe namesake. As Edgar Allan Poe famously said, "The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world."
Maggie is exposed to typhoid as well, but manages a recovery, though not fully as far as her spirit. Maggie, carries an immense amount of guilt around for being in love with Anabel's friend, Geoffrey, the most popular man in town (who, much to everyone's shock and disappointment, also develops a friendship with Priscilla, the "poor girl"). Maggie finds a second chance at a deeply meaningful friendship with Priscilla but it seems from every angle Priscilla is attacked for her lack of money and expensive luxuries in her dorm room. Everyone else has the best of furniture, linens, clothes... all paid for by indulgent parents,,, but no one seems to care too much about actual school attendance. Priscilla tries to do right by the people that worked so hard to give her a better shot in life but is blindsided by the vehement dislike of all these rich girls telling her she's not good enough to run in their circles. Maggie is cornered and questioned for her friendship with Priscilla. Even Maggie's popularity was a mystery to me - though she was one of the richest girls in the school, throughout the story she constantly seemed to be having what she called "one of her bad half-hours" (only they were coming around like clockwork) where she would bite someone's head off for no reason one minute, call them names, ridicule them and then in the next instance profess her undying love and luck in friendship with them! It struck me as if maybe Maggie was a closet bipolar.
" Maggie's mood scarcely puzzled them. She was so erratic that no one expected anything from her but the unexpected..."
Not to say that bipolar people don't need love too, they do, it was just a mystery to me that Priscilla being poor was unforgivable but the abuse Maggie showed her friends was just considered something of a personality quirk! I saw this behavior a number of times myself when I was in school and it didn't make any more sense back then. Though being a girl myself, I just gotta get this out - women are freakin' weird sometimes!!
The saddest scenes are when Priscilla tries to put differences aside, help these girls out when they get in a bind and finds that she's been led into traps specifically set up to publicly humiliate her. To this day, I am still amazed at how catty women can get sometimes over the most petty things! Case in point, one of the girls, Polly, another slightly less popular but comes from a family with money kind of girl, gets into some money trouble spending too much in the local shops (she bought a bunch of stuff on credit and couldn't pay it back and knew her parents wouldn't give her the money). This poor girl has to auction off her stuff to raise money again so her father won't find out her spending addiction. Well, the girls go nuts, like tigers at dinnertime at the zoo, and start fighting over who gets what of her stuff - before she's even organized the auction! The school does not approve of the auction, but doesn't find out about it until it's over, getting a bunch of girls in trouble, including Priscilla, who didn't buy anything but merely attended because her friend Maggie was there.
Much of the drama of the novel stems from this auction, where Maggie and Rosalind, a girl with a peculiarly strong hatred for Priscilla (which is intensified when Rosalind feels she's been replaced as Maggie's personal pet of a friend) get in a bidding war over Polly's sealskin coat and coral jewelry set.
Maggie doesn't understand Rosalind's behavior and in fueled defense of her friend, Prissie, Maggie bids on the coat and wins it (though she has no interest in owning it). She also bids on the coral jewelry, mainly just to drive up the bid that Rosalind would have to pay. Rosalind gets caught up in the bid and ends up bidding five pounds higher than she can actually afford. It's like an episode of Storage Wars! :-P Thus starts the real drama to the story - what cheap levels Rosalind will stoop to, to gather that extra five pounds... eventually putting together a scheme that sheds a particularly bad, and undeserved light on Priscilla. But karma wins out in the end
;-) Big fan of that girl, Karma lol.
Priscilla reminded me a lot of me my first year of college, before I had a healthy dose of the real world lol. Many of the conversations she has with teachers and friends I remember having at times. One in particular, a scene where Priscilla visits the vicar that helped send her to school, struck me as a sort of a mix of myself then and now:
"So I have come to you," continued Priscilla, " to say that I must take steps at once to enable me to earn money...I must earn must as soon as it is possible for a girl to do so, and I must stop dreaming and thinking of nothing but books, for perhaps books and I will have little to say to each other in the future,"
"That would be sad," replied Mr. Hayes (the vicar), "for that would be taking a direct opposite direction to the path that Providence clearly intends you to walk in....when it comes to a woman earning her bread, let her turn to that path where promise lies...Here there is much." He touched her big forehead lightly with his hand. "You must not give up your books, my dear," he said, " for independently of the pleasure they afford, they will also give you bread and butter."
I still struggle daily with finding my "bread and butter" path in life! And there have been times when I've said that I just need to pull my head out of my books, but in fact - those books are such a huge part of the person I've become today. They gave me a source of reason and teaching when nothing else was offered. They gave me peace in knowing that my feelings were not exclusive and I was not alone in days of suffering. As cheezy as it sounds, books also kept me believing in love and good people. If you don't have a source, any source, of hope and faith, what do you have??
That's one of the things that surprised and impressed me about this novel - the subtle mix of innocence, darkness, petty behavior, jealousies, conflicted emotions, guilt... it's all in here!
September 4, 2015
Written in 1891 when women's colleges were first being established, this book is an interesting glimpse at the past. What interested me was the rules were much less restrictive than what I encountered in 1968. The language is a little stilted but has an interesting plot and is an enjoyable read.
March 4, 2010
Just the kind of book girls should read before we go to universities
May 6, 2015
Very enjoyable read, found it for free on kindle. Just could not put it down, as I was drawn into the lives of late 19th century girl graduates in England.
Read
February 21, 2016Enjoyed reading this- it had me thinking of St. Dominics, Enid Blyton's school stories, and An Old Fashioned Girl!
May 24, 2022
Interesting window into late 19th century women's college life, but I was surprised by how contemporary so many of the issues were. Others have made the comment that this book is "Mean Girls" in the Victorian period, and that does certainly apply - many of the college or school novel tropes are present here (class differences, bullying, malicious gossip and pranks, diverse background experiences, queen bees vs. nerds vs. jealous rivals, and even girl crushes and fan adoration), giving rise to the adage that "the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I thought the character development was interesting and there was little surprise really about how things would end up for most of the characters. What I found surprising was that, although the setting was supposed to be England, there were many aspects that made me think of the American 19th/early 20th century college novels I've read over the years, so I had to keep reminding myself this was a British college setting. I also found it surprising how much freedom from adult supervision the young women had. That is a difference with American versions of these novels: there are much stricter controls and supervision by patrons and house mothers in American novels of the same period.
The social mobility elements were clearly in place: it was clear Priscilla would only be " allowed" to go so far, even though she did move up the social scale. In keeping with Victorian social mores, the newly (crass) rich daughter (Polly) would not have the same opportunities for fitting in that old-monied (even if orphaned) Maggie (queen bee) would have. It's no surprise that only Maggie has any kind of romance in this story. And the truly deceitful Rosalind gets her just comeuppance, as would be expected in any good Victorian novel. It's quite interesting and pleasantly surprising, however, that the loyalties and friendships exist as they do.
I both liked and disliked the character of Priscilla. There was a kind of obverse pride she took in being quite outspoken about her impoverished situation, and made a point several times of not trying to fit in. It was a trait that Meade gave her that was both commendable and off-putting. At one point in the novel, I felt like the story stopped being Priscilla's story and mire Maggie's - with Priscilla the vehicle for helping Maggie get her satisfactory ending. In spite of being a bit annoyed at Maggie's drama, I found myself appreciating her character even more than Priscilla's. Maggie was a truly complex character.
I was much more intrigued by this novel than I thought I would be, and it's made me eager to read more by Meade. Long criticized and underrated by scholars and reviewers (both at the time and now) because of her prolific output (300 plus novels), her subject matter (adolescent girl novels and mysteries mostly), and her "for profit" writing career (she supported her family through her writing), she is only now coming to be more seriously studied (as the field of 19th/early 20th century Girls' Literature gains momentum and respectability). She was an active feminist at a time when women's suffrage and protests against the "angel in the house" concept of women were becoming quite public in England, and her books should be looked at for how those ideas made their way into the stories she wrote for girls.
I thought the character development was interesting and there was little surprise really about how things would end up for most of the characters. What I found surprising was that, although the setting was supposed to be England, there were many aspects that made me think of the American 19th/early 20th century college novels I've read over the years, so I had to keep reminding myself this was a British college setting. I also found it surprising how much freedom from adult supervision the young women had. That is a difference with American versions of these novels: there are much stricter controls and supervision by patrons and house mothers in American novels of the same period.
The social mobility elements were clearly in place: it was clear Priscilla would only be " allowed" to go so far, even though she did move up the social scale. In keeping with Victorian social mores, the newly (crass) rich daughter (Polly) would not have the same opportunities for fitting in that old-monied (even if orphaned) Maggie (queen bee) would have. It's no surprise that only Maggie has any kind of romance in this story. And the truly deceitful Rosalind gets her just comeuppance, as would be expected in any good Victorian novel. It's quite interesting and pleasantly surprising, however, that the loyalties and friendships exist as they do.
I both liked and disliked the character of Priscilla. There was a kind of obverse pride she took in being quite outspoken about her impoverished situation, and made a point several times of not trying to fit in. It was a trait that Meade gave her that was both commendable and off-putting. At one point in the novel, I felt like the story stopped being Priscilla's story and mire Maggie's - with Priscilla the vehicle for helping Maggie get her satisfactory ending. In spite of being a bit annoyed at Maggie's drama, I found myself appreciating her character even more than Priscilla's. Maggie was a truly complex character.
I was much more intrigued by this novel than I thought I would be, and it's made me eager to read more by Meade. Long criticized and underrated by scholars and reviewers (both at the time and now) because of her prolific output (300 plus novels), her subject matter (adolescent girl novels and mysteries mostly), and her "for profit" writing career (she supported her family through her writing), she is only now coming to be more seriously studied (as the field of 19th/early 20th century Girls' Literature gains momentum and respectability). She was an active feminist at a time when women's suffrage and protests against the "angel in the house" concept of women were becoming quite public in England, and her books should be looked at for how those ideas made their way into the stories she wrote for girls.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 15, 2013
Ah! What a tragic main character we have here. Not blessed with fortune, looks or even a departed relative to leave her money like so many school girl heroines, Priscilla has to make her own way and keep to her own judgement. I loved her ending, and that of her chum Maggie, so much. I just wish for Priscilla to have meet her own Prince-perhaps not a man of wealth, but someone to bear her burdens as well as his own, someone to match her mind and temperament. Still, I must be satisfied with this book as it is, and imagine her hard work will one day throw her into the path of someone a little like Mr Darcy was for Elizabeth!
December 11, 2018
Finally a good Victorian school story about girls at school!! The dynamic between Maggie and Prissie was so electric and interesting to me that I made a fanmix for them. Would read more stories by L.T. Meade and other women writers if they're this good.
Want to read
March 13, 2017Read this book for free through Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43139/...
June 25, 2019
Prissie
Is this book the reason why people who are upstanding truthful and caring are called Prissie? The main character was all these things but they made her shine.
Is this book the reason why people who are upstanding truthful and caring are called Prissie? The main character was all these things but they made her shine.
February 6, 2023
Enjoyable read!
Being an older book, we are allowed a glimpse into another era. Finding many things old are new again or actually the same as they are today. This is a quick read. And anyway maybe i'm related to the author. Definitely worth the read.
Being an older book, we are allowed a glimpse into another era. Finding many things old are new again or actually the same as they are today. This is a quick read. And anyway maybe i'm related to the author. Definitely worth the read.
December 2, 2009
Originally published in 1890s as "A Sweet Girl Graduate" it is a glowing example of its type. Upstanding upright Priscilla goes off to college in order to be able to earn money to support her three younger sisters. Adventures and scandal ensue-our Priscilla remains above it all, a shining example of virtue.
September 12, 2013
I enjoyed this, but I'm a sucker for girls' boarding school books of the antiquarian variety. Priscilla's a little much, of course, but I enjoyed this preachy little story where no one really does anything terrible and it all gets wrapped up in the end.
January 19, 2013
I read it because it was a free e-book on Kindle. Nothing exciting but nevertheless good.
March 3, 2013
I loved this book! I thought it was great -- there are a lot of issues and things to talk about in it.
September 12, 2015
I really enjoy these old books. Fun read.
June 10, 2008
easy reading girl's school story.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews