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The Madcap of the School
Angela Brazil (1868-1947) was one of the first British writers of the "modern" School Girls' Stories genre - written from the characters' point of view. Along with her sister Amy, Angela studied at Heatherley School of Fine Art in London.
She was quite late in taking up writing, developing a strong interest in Welsh mythology, and at first wrote a few magazine articles on mythology and nature. It was possibly thanks to her sister Amy that she finally began work on a novel at the age of 35.
Exceptionally with respect to many of her contemporaries writing in this vein, Brazil did not write any books in a series - each stood on its own with different characters every time. These were considered to deal accurately and sympathetically with the highs and lows in the lives of middle-class schoolgirls, including the tangle of emotional friendships.
Her works include: 'The New Girl at St. Chad's' (1911), 'For the Sake of the School' (1915), 'The Luckiest Girl in the School' (1916) and 'The Jolliest School of All' (1922).
She was quite late in taking up writing, developing a strong interest in Welsh mythology, and at first wrote a few magazine articles on mythology and nature. It was possibly thanks to her sister Amy that she finally began work on a novel at the age of 35.
Exceptionally with respect to many of her contemporaries writing in this vein, Brazil did not write any books in a series - each stood on its own with different characters every time. These were considered to deal accurately and sympathetically with the highs and lows in the lives of middle-class schoolgirls, including the tangle of emotional friendships.
Her works include: 'The New Girl at St. Chad's' (1911), 'For the Sake of the School' (1915), 'The Luckiest Girl in the School' (1916) and 'The Jolliest School of All' (1922).
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1917
About the author
Angela Brazil
129 books35 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Born in Preston, Lancashire in 1868, Angela Brazil (pronounced "brazzle") was the youngest child of cotton mill manager Clarence Brazil, and his wife, Angelica McKinnel. She was educated at the Turrets - a small private school in Wallasey - and then, when the Brazils were living in Manchester, at the preparatory department of the Manchester High School, and (as a boarder) at Ellerslie, an exclusive girls’ school near Victoria Park. She subsequently attended Heatherley's Art School, in London, with her sister Amy, and sketching remained a life-long interest.
With the death of Clarence Brazil in 1899, the family left the North-West of England for Llanbedr, Wales, where they took up residence in their former summer house. It is believed that, at some point during this period (1899-1911), Brazil worked as a governess, although she does not mention it in her autobiography, My Own Schooldays (1925). In 1911, she moved to Coventry, where she kept house for her doctor brother, living in that city until her death, in 1947.
Brazil's first children's novel, A Terrible Tomboy, was published in 1904, and is believed to have been autobiographical, featuring the adventures of a young Angela (Peggy), and her friend Leila Langdale (Lilian). It was only with the 1907 publication of her second novel, The Fortunes of Philippa, that she turned to the genre in which she would become so influential: the Girls' School Story.
Brazil is often described by readers as "the first author of modern girls' school stories," and her publisher Blackie once claimed, in a bit of promotional hyperbole, that she had originated the genre! While not actually true - the genre predates her by some time, and other authors of modern girls school stories, such as May Baldwin, were publishing before she was - Brazil was certainly immensely influential, in the genre's move away from a didactic, moralistic model, towards one aimed more at entertainment. Her books are told from the perspective of her girl characters themselves, and were immensely popular with young readers, both in her own lifetime, and afterward. All told, she published close to sixty children's novels, most of them girls' school stories.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Born in Preston, Lancashire in 1868, Angela Brazil (pronounced "brazzle") was the youngest child of cotton mill manager Clarence Brazil, and his wife, Angelica McKinnel. She was educated at the Turrets - a small private school in Wallasey - and then, when the Brazils were living in Manchester, at the preparatory department of the Manchester High School, and (as a boarder) at Ellerslie, an exclusive girls’ school near Victoria Park. She subsequently attended Heatherley's Art School, in London, with her sister Amy, and sketching remained a life-long interest.
With the death of Clarence Brazil in 1899, the family left the North-West of England for Llanbedr, Wales, where they took up residence in their former summer house. It is believed that, at some point during this period (1899-1911), Brazil worked as a governess, although she does not mention it in her autobiography, My Own Schooldays (1925). In 1911, she moved to Coventry, where she kept house for her doctor brother, living in that city until her death, in 1947.
Brazil's first children's novel, A Terrible Tomboy, was published in 1904, and is believed to have been autobiographical, featuring the adventures of a young Angela (Peggy), and her friend Leila Langdale (Lilian). It was only with the 1907 publication of her second novel, The Fortunes of Philippa, that she turned to the genre in which she would become so influential: the Girls' School Story.
Brazil is often described by readers as "the first author of modern girls' school stories," and her publisher Blackie once claimed, in a bit of promotional hyperbole, that she had originated the genre! While not actually true - the genre predates her by some time, and other authors of modern girls school stories, such as May Baldwin, were publishing before she was - Brazil was certainly immensely influential, in the genre's move away from a didactic, moralistic model, towards one aimed more at entertainment. Her books are told from the perspective of her girl characters themselves, and were immensely popular with young readers, both in her own lifetime, and afterward. All told, she published close to sixty children's novels, most of them girls' school stories.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 6, 2013
This was my first Angela Brazil book. I wished to read this author since reading in 'You're a Brick Angela' that she was one of the pioneers of the school girl genre I love so much. However, I highly disliked Raymonde, the main character, as being rather mean, self centred and childish. She and her friends (who never really gain distinct characters - except for the rather pathetic Fauvette)don't seem to care much for anything except their own amusement. Unlike other madcap pranksters in other school stories (Evvy, Corney and Margia from Chalet, Bobby from St Clares, Alicia from Malory Towers)they don't seem to able to understand when a prank is wrong - either when considering it or when reeling from the consequences. The setting, whilst romantic, also failed to have the same pleasant feeling of the school at the Chalet, Malory Towers or the Abbey. The main reason I persevered with this book was its interesting antiquated view points, its WW1 patriotic attitude and the fascinating progressive nature of the rather maligned teacher, Miss Gibbs. This character, for me, was the most interesting in the book and the one I'd like the most to sit down and talk to!
October 27, 2016
Another delightful find from Keppel St Books in Bathurst- always keen for another school story to collect/read. I did think however, that I might have read both stories in other collections before. They both were awfully familiar! However, that didn't take away from the magic. It was refreshing to dip back into one of my favorite genres, that of the older schoolgirl books. This was particularly cute because it featured a 'crush' a young girl has on her female, older teacher. :)
Lovely little book, recommended for any other school girl lovers. Four stars.
Lovely little book, recommended for any other school girl lovers. Four stars.
November 1, 2011
I didn't mind this one, but it's not her best. Her characters aren't very 'sporty' here, and never really get the proper punishment for the naughtiness they get up to on every second page. Really, because there is no development in the characters, it kind of makes the book seem pointless. The Grange seemed a prison in this one, and I had to agree with the school girls that if they had more leniency they might not have been so bad all the time.
February 6, 2011
An absolutely ripping yarn. ;) Maybe it's wrong to tag this as gay but it was entirely about a girl, Judy, who has an EPIC crush on one of her teachers. xD And keeps disgracing herself in front of said teacher! But of course it's all right in the end. I love the cover of this one so much - and the photograph Judy is holding? It's of the teacher she's crushing on, of course!
September 7, 2016
fun, funny and realistic
Lot of fun to read with real penetrating characterizations, feels much more real than many other school stories despite obvious dramatization of one or two events. Mostly low key real feeling situations.
Lot of fun to read with real penetrating characterizations, feels much more real than many other school stories despite obvious dramatization of one or two events. Mostly low key real feeling situations.
November 26, 2011
Gosh, I hated this. Made it to about page 20 before the mean-spirited pranks made me give up.
July 5, 2020
‘I consider it my mission in life is to keep things humming’, says Raymonde, a cheerful, irresponsible 15-year-old determined to enjoy life and liven up her select boarding school even in the middle of the First World War. Will anything ever change her ways, or will she remain a madcap till the end?
This is vintage Angela Brazil: the small school relocated to an Elizabethan manor full of secret passages, the exotic names (Raymonde’s friends include Ardiune, Morvyth and Fauvette), the slang (‘jinky’, ‘scooterons-nous’), the comic and dramatic exploits in the confined world of school where a trip to the local shop is an exotic excursion, and the adults in authority seen with a jaundiced eye. In fact this particular book has often been taken as an epitome of Brazil’s writing, to her detriment - while it certainly captures her desire to write about her audience of middle-class teenagers as they really were, it doesn’t have the depth that can be found in other books where her characters really have to wrestle with difficult situations. The girls of The Grange have no real money worries, families pushed well into the background, and no real ambitions for the world beyond school. Even the war is something seen from far off, requiring money to be raised for good causes but not really having any impact on the girls’ lives. They exist in a school vacuum where Mademoiselle keeping a lesson running for an extra quarter of an hour is a major event.
This does probably capture the lives of a lot of the girls about whom Brazil writes. In some ways it’s refreshing that she depicts teenage schoolgirls as anything but high-minded idealists. Raymonde and her friends come down on anyone who strays too far into eccentricity or enthusiasm, in a way which is sometimes funny but often smacks to a modern reader uncomfortably of bullying. They are all too conscious that they are kept ridiculously isolated, and there is an interesting conversation about why their reading is censored. Brazil also gives us Miss Gibbs, a woman of strong character and intellectual tendencies, whose ideas are received realistically by the girls with a mix of scorn and interest.
It has to be said that some of the language and attitudes expressed in this book are absolutely of their time and make some passages hard to read today. In one sense Raymonde and her friends are real schoolgirls, but in another they are somewhat ciphers - other than the names, there is little to differentiate Ardiune, Aveline, Valentine et al. It’s Fauvette, mostly presented as the baby of the group, with fluffy hair and mind, who sticks, with her thoughts on her highly believable future as a social butterfly some of the most mature expressed by any of the characters.
I don’t think this is the best book to represent Brazil’s entire oeuvre - A Fourth Form Friendship and The Nicest Girl in the School are better examples of her early ‘small school in a country house’ writing, for starters, because there is more to them than a series of incidents. But its irrepressible vigour and believable portrayal of teenage girls do make it worth a read, even if no modern reader can see Raymonde as irresistibly charming as no doubt her first audiences found her.
This is vintage Angela Brazil: the small school relocated to an Elizabethan manor full of secret passages, the exotic names (Raymonde’s friends include Ardiune, Morvyth and Fauvette), the slang (‘jinky’, ‘scooterons-nous’), the comic and dramatic exploits in the confined world of school where a trip to the local shop is an exotic excursion, and the adults in authority seen with a jaundiced eye. In fact this particular book has often been taken as an epitome of Brazil’s writing, to her detriment - while it certainly captures her desire to write about her audience of middle-class teenagers as they really were, it doesn’t have the depth that can be found in other books where her characters really have to wrestle with difficult situations. The girls of The Grange have no real money worries, families pushed well into the background, and no real ambitions for the world beyond school. Even the war is something seen from far off, requiring money to be raised for good causes but not really having any impact on the girls’ lives. They exist in a school vacuum where Mademoiselle keeping a lesson running for an extra quarter of an hour is a major event.
This does probably capture the lives of a lot of the girls about whom Brazil writes. In some ways it’s refreshing that she depicts teenage schoolgirls as anything but high-minded idealists. Raymonde and her friends come down on anyone who strays too far into eccentricity or enthusiasm, in a way which is sometimes funny but often smacks to a modern reader uncomfortably of bullying. They are all too conscious that they are kept ridiculously isolated, and there is an interesting conversation about why their reading is censored. Brazil also gives us Miss Gibbs, a woman of strong character and intellectual tendencies, whose ideas are received realistically by the girls with a mix of scorn and interest.
It has to be said that some of the language and attitudes expressed in this book are absolutely of their time and make some passages hard to read today. In one sense Raymonde and her friends are real schoolgirls, but in another they are somewhat ciphers - other than the names, there is little to differentiate Ardiune, Aveline, Valentine et al. It’s Fauvette, mostly presented as the baby of the group, with fluffy hair and mind, who sticks, with her thoughts on her highly believable future as a social butterfly some of the most mature expressed by any of the characters.
I don’t think this is the best book to represent Brazil’s entire oeuvre - A Fourth Form Friendship and The Nicest Girl in the School are better examples of her early ‘small school in a country house’ writing, for starters, because there is more to them than a series of incidents. But its irrepressible vigour and believable portrayal of teenage girls do make it worth a read, even if no modern reader can see Raymonde as irresistibly charming as no doubt her first audiences found her.
November 24, 2023
There was a point in reading this where I thought about how disappointed the average schoolgirl in the 1930s or 1940s might have been when her school didn't burn down, nobody fell down a pit and needed rescuing, the school's honour could not be saved by getting that vital goal in the last few minutes or impressing the local dignitaries so much with your daring-do that you all got an extra day of school holiday because of it. I mean, the disappointment of an average term! Not one broken bone requiring setting with just a twig and a doily!
What you might be gathering from this is that Chaundler's exploits in The Madcap of the School and the other short story of this volume ("The Prize For Valour") tend towards the more sensational end of the genre. The title story is the better of the two and focuses upon Judy's unadulterated pash for one of her mistresses who first thinks poorly of her and realises what a good egg she is! It's not a spoiler, trust me, if you know the genre then you know how this is going to end up from page one. But it's still a very dynamic and well-told story that sort of deliriously hurtles from incident to incident and does it all in under fifty pages and god, I love that sort of attitude very much. Give me feverish info-dumps, give me wild and overblown drama and resolve it all in thirty seconds, ugh, I love it, books like this, they're the bomb.
The second title in the volume is a slightly more complicated thing. Chaundler's still focused on that whole big and overblown vibe in her work but manages to carry it off with aplomb. The girls are concerned with winning a prize for valour but oh no! there's a wet lettuce in the form who's scared of everything! What on earth will happen? (We all know, right?). Despite reinforcing my conviction that no author of this period quite knew what an artery was or indeed where one might be, this is great stuff. Two sandwiches short of a picnic, deeply incomprehensible, deliciously delirious stuff. Perfect. Five stars. Fifty five stars. Ratings are inconsequential!
What you might be gathering from this is that Chaundler's exploits in The Madcap of the School and the other short story of this volume ("The Prize For Valour") tend towards the more sensational end of the genre. The title story is the better of the two and focuses upon Judy's unadulterated pash for one of her mistresses who first thinks poorly of her and realises what a good egg she is! It's not a spoiler, trust me, if you know the genre then you know how this is going to end up from page one. But it's still a very dynamic and well-told story that sort of deliriously hurtles from incident to incident and does it all in under fifty pages and god, I love that sort of attitude very much. Give me feverish info-dumps, give me wild and overblown drama and resolve it all in thirty seconds, ugh, I love it, books like this, they're the bomb.
The second title in the volume is a slightly more complicated thing. Chaundler's still focused on that whole big and overblown vibe in her work but manages to carry it off with aplomb. The girls are concerned with winning a prize for valour but oh no! there's a wet lettuce in the form who's scared of everything! What on earth will happen? (We all know, right?). Despite reinforcing my conviction that no author of this period quite knew what an artery was or indeed where one might be, this is great stuff. Two sandwiches short of a picnic, deeply incomprehensible, deliciously delirious stuff. Perfect. Five stars. Fifty five stars. Ratings are inconsequential!
April 18, 2011
Judy cannot get a break. First she foolishly puts a rare photo of her beloved Miss Shepherd on the windowsill (with predictable results)then she is crushed when Miss Shepherd mistakenly believes Judy has bribed her (Miss Shepherd's) little sister Betty to risk life and limb retrieving the photograph. In a less than credible adventure sequence, Judy risks her own life rescuing little Betty from a dormitory fire, finally redeeming herself in the eyes of her beloved teacher. The daredevil rescue is totally unbelievable, and the adored Miss Shepherd comes off as a rigid and unbending teacher, at least until Judy's heroism changes her mind. Christine Chaundler's books are always entertaining. The first half of the book is fast-paced and funny, and the hapless Judy is a plucky heroine, but the dangerous fire escapade totally shatters any credibility of the plot. My edition of this book has a second story, "The Prize for Valour."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 5, 2015
Raymonde is the title "Madcap" and with her coterie of friends is up for any amusements that come her way.
I found it odd that so many of the girls had such strange names -- besides Raymonde, her friends include Ardiune, Aveline, Fauvette, Morvyth!
I found it odd that so many of the girls had such strange names -- besides Raymonde, her friends include Ardiune, Aveline, Fauvette, Morvyth!
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December 22, 2012Interesting.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews