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The New House Mistress
"The New House Mistress" by Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
- GenresSchool StoriesChildrens
94 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
26 people want to read
About the author
Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
171 books111 followersElinor M. Brent-Dyer was born as Gladys Eleanor May Dyer on 6th April 1894, in South Shields in the industrial northeast of England, and grew up in a terraced house which had no garden or inside toilet. She was the only daughter of Eleanor Watson Rutherford and Charles Morris Brent Dyer. Her father, who had been married before, left home when she was three years old. In 1912, her brother Henzell died at age 17 of cerebro-spinal fever. After her father died, her mother remarried in 1913.
Elinor was educated at a small local private school in South Shields and returned there to teach when she was eighteen after spending two years at the City of Leeds Training College. Her teaching career spanned 36 years, during which she taught in a wide variety of state and private schools in the northeast, in Middlesex, Bedfordshire, Hampshire, and finally in Hereford.
In the early 1920s she adopted the name Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer. A holiday she spent in the Austrian Tyrol at Pertisau-am-Achensee gave her the inspiration for the first location in the Chalet School series. However, her first book, 'Gerry Goes to School', was published in 1922 and was written for the child actress Hazel Bainbridge. Her first 'Chalet' story, 'The School at the Chalet', was originally published in 1925.
In 1930, the same year that 'Jean of Storms' was serialised, she converted to Roman Catholicism.
In 1933 the Brent-Dyer household (she lived with her mother and stepfather until her mother's death in 1957) moved to Hereford. She travelled daily to Peterchurch as a governess.
When her stepfather died she started her own school in Hereford, The Margaret Roper School. It was non-denominational but with a strong religious tradition. Many Chalet School customs were followed, the girls even wore a similar uniform made in the Chalet School's colours of brown and flame. Elinor was rather untidy, erratic and flamboyant and not really suited to being a headmistress. After her school closed in 1948 she devoted most of her time to writing.
Elinor's mother died in 1957 and in 1964 she moved to Redhill, where she lived in a joint establishment with fellow school story author Phyllis Matthewman and her husband, until her death on 20th September 1969.
During her lifetime Elinor M. Brent-Dyer published 101 books but she is remembered mainly for her Chalet School series. The series numbers 58 books and is the longest-surviving series of girls' school-stories ever known, having been continuously in print for more than 70 years. One hundred thousand paperback copies are still being sold each year.
Among her published books are other school stories; family, historical, adventure and animal stories; a cookery book, and four educational geography-readers. She also wrote plays and numerous unpublished poems and was a keen musician.
In 1994, the year of the centenary of her Elinor Brent-Dyer's birth, Friends of the Chalet School put up plaques in Pertisau, South Shields and Hereford, and a headstone was erected on her grave in Redstone Cemetery, since there was not one previously. They also put flowers on her grave on the anniversaries of her birth and death and on other special occasions.
Elinor was educated at a small local private school in South Shields and returned there to teach when she was eighteen after spending two years at the City of Leeds Training College. Her teaching career spanned 36 years, during which she taught in a wide variety of state and private schools in the northeast, in Middlesex, Bedfordshire, Hampshire, and finally in Hereford.
In the early 1920s she adopted the name Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer. A holiday she spent in the Austrian Tyrol at Pertisau-am-Achensee gave her the inspiration for the first location in the Chalet School series. However, her first book, 'Gerry Goes to School', was published in 1922 and was written for the child actress Hazel Bainbridge. Her first 'Chalet' story, 'The School at the Chalet', was originally published in 1925.
In 1930, the same year that 'Jean of Storms' was serialised, she converted to Roman Catholicism.
In 1933 the Brent-Dyer household (she lived with her mother and stepfather until her mother's death in 1957) moved to Hereford. She travelled daily to Peterchurch as a governess.
When her stepfather died she started her own school in Hereford, The Margaret Roper School. It was non-denominational but with a strong religious tradition. Many Chalet School customs were followed, the girls even wore a similar uniform made in the Chalet School's colours of brown and flame. Elinor was rather untidy, erratic and flamboyant and not really suited to being a headmistress. After her school closed in 1948 she devoted most of her time to writing.
Elinor's mother died in 1957 and in 1964 she moved to Redhill, where she lived in a joint establishment with fellow school story author Phyllis Matthewman and her husband, until her death on 20th September 1969.
During her lifetime Elinor M. Brent-Dyer published 101 books but she is remembered mainly for her Chalet School series. The series numbers 58 books and is the longest-surviving series of girls' school-stories ever known, having been continuously in print for more than 70 years. One hundred thousand paperback copies are still being sold each year.
Among her published books are other school stories; family, historical, adventure and animal stories; a cookery book, and four educational geography-readers. She also wrote plays and numerous unpublished poems and was a keen musician.
In 1994, the year of the centenary of her Elinor Brent-Dyer's birth, Friends of the Chalet School put up plaques in Pertisau, South Shields and Hereford, and a headstone was erected on her grave in Redstone Cemetery, since there was not one previously. They also put flowers on her grave on the anniversaries of her birth and death and on other special occasions.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 23, 2016
I almost missed this book. I was settling into my traditional 'let's check the B section in the bookshop just in case but there won't be anything there' frame of mind, and when I saw The New House Mistress tucked behind Angela Brazil (as it were), I couldn't quite understand what was seeing. It wasn't a Chalet School title and it wasn't anything to do with La Rochelle and it was tiny. It is a small, slim, standalone book originally published in 1928, the same year as The Head Girl of the Chalet School, and it seemed to have passed me by.
Reader, I bought it. I hyperventilated somewhat as I did, but I bought it, and then I ran home like Gollum with the One Ring, and I sat and I read this strange little book. It's a fairly straightforward premise; there's a new house mistress, and the girl's aren't keen on her until oh look they are. (The delicious comfort of school stories and their tropes!)
The New House Mistress isn't the best written title in Brent-Dyer's canon. I was startled to figure out the publication date, because that period of time is a good time in Brent-Dyer land. The Tyrolean Chalet School books are wildly vivid stories and The New House Mistress kind of isn't? It's not got enough space to breathe; there's too much scene setting and rules to get through, and substantial amounts of the book are devoted to telling (along the lines of 'and then she said this, to which Miss so and so did this, and then that') as opposed to the delicious revelry that Brent-Dyer could deliver.
But then I got to The Incidents, and I deliberately capitalise them because this book is somewhat hysterically brilliant and utterly perfect because of the series of incidents which occur throughout the term. There is a Tree Incident, a Fire Incident, a Crocodile Incident, and a Dancing On The Lawn Incident, and they're basically so convoluted and hyperbolic and ridiculous that they reach Althea Joins the Chalet School level quality. The Tree Incident, by the way, provides one of my utterly favourite pages ever in literature (page 20, fact fans)
This book is gorgeous, and it's ridiculous and it's too brief and it's hideously written at times and it's kind of spectacularly off its tree and I guess that that more than anything makes it a wonderfully perfect representative of Brent-Dyer's work.
Reader, I bought it. I hyperventilated somewhat as I did, but I bought it, and then I ran home like Gollum with the One Ring, and I sat and I read this strange little book. It's a fairly straightforward premise; there's a new house mistress, and the girl's aren't keen on her until oh look they are. (The delicious comfort of school stories and their tropes!)
The New House Mistress isn't the best written title in Brent-Dyer's canon. I was startled to figure out the publication date, because that period of time is a good time in Brent-Dyer land. The Tyrolean Chalet School books are wildly vivid stories and The New House Mistress kind of isn't? It's not got enough space to breathe; there's too much scene setting and rules to get through, and substantial amounts of the book are devoted to telling (along the lines of 'and then she said this, to which Miss so and so did this, and then that') as opposed to the delicious revelry that Brent-Dyer could deliver.
But then I got to The Incidents, and I deliberately capitalise them because this book is somewhat hysterically brilliant and utterly perfect because of the series of incidents which occur throughout the term. There is a Tree Incident, a Fire Incident, a Crocodile Incident, and a Dancing On The Lawn Incident, and they're basically so convoluted and hyperbolic and ridiculous that they reach Althea Joins the Chalet School level quality. The Tree Incident, by the way, provides one of my utterly favourite pages ever in literature (page 20, fact fans)
This book is gorgeous, and it's ridiculous and it's too brief and it's hideously written at times and it's kind of spectacularly off its tree and I guess that that more than anything makes it a wonderfully perfect representative of Brent-Dyer's work.
January 10, 2016
This much-maligned title by EBD (by me as much as anyone) does have several key elements to recommend it - strong central characters, several key exciting incidents that have a natural cause (tree-climbing and someone being knocked into a pool) which help to progress the development of the storyline, and the inclusion of events that show the school going on as usual. However there are some points that verge on the ludicrous - one girl threatened with expulsion for climbing a tree and getting stuck when such a thing wasn't even forbidden? A girl going out and dancing barefoot on the lawn in the middle of the night, for which she receives pretty much no punishment at all? The girl responsible for the pool accident is told off by the Head, by the Prefects and by pretty much everyone else in the school? One feels that the EBD of several years later would have written these incidents in a much more convincing manner. There are several storylines that are dropped - no repercussions for one character behaving in an unsportmanlike manner, and term moves along so quickly that we don't know if there are consequences for events such as the unexpected swim or the midnight dancing. And of course the exciting adventure in the middle of the book that links to the events of the final chapters, both of which stretch the long arm of coincidence until it begs for mercy. This book fails for two reasons - the fact that it is so short means events are given time to play out in a more realistic manner, and EBD's writing is not strong enough at this stage of her career to carry it off completely. Ironically if it had been one of her other schools, such as Janeways, Skelton Hall or the Chalet School, meaning that less attention needed to be paid to explaining the rules, regulations and traditions, it might have worked much better.
November 23, 2016
Yes, well. I was very excited - an EBD I've never read! - and then I read it. I know subtly was never EBD's strong point but this is ludicrous.
The book has a plot, but this is not something EBD always bothers with and she doesn't work too hard on it here, because, as ever, her characters decide they want to tell a different story. EBD sets out to tell a story in which the middles go about making the new house-mistress's life unpleasant, until (presumably) they see the error of their ways. In practice, the new house-mistress earns their respect about 20 minutes after she arrives, so this becomes a story about multiple Heroic Rescues, tennis matches, and moonlight dancing.
There are, I suspect, few authors who would include so much incident (I mean: the crocodiles. For pity's sake) in a book which has fewer than 100 pages. What was EBD thinking?! What was the publisher thinking?! And as for what I'm thinking... Let's just say, this isn't EBD's best work. It's probably not her worst, either. But it is an indicator of how much she reined in her imagination for the early CS books. And no, I can't believe I've just written that either...
The book has a plot, but this is not something EBD always bothers with and she doesn't work too hard on it here, because, as ever, her characters decide they want to tell a different story. EBD sets out to tell a story in which the middles go about making the new house-mistress's life unpleasant, until (presumably) they see the error of their ways. In practice, the new house-mistress earns their respect about 20 minutes after she arrives, so this becomes a story about multiple Heroic Rescues, tennis matches, and moonlight dancing.
There are, I suspect, few authors who would include so much incident (I mean: the crocodiles. For pity's sake) in a book which has fewer than 100 pages. What was EBD thinking?! What was the publisher thinking?! And as for what I'm thinking... Let's just say, this isn't EBD's best work. It's probably not her worst, either. But it is an indicator of how much she reined in her imagination for the early CS books. And no, I can't believe I've just written that either...
March 4, 2011
Angela Oswald is an old girl who returns to St. Helen's School. But Barbara Allan, obsessively devoted to the mistress whose place Angela fills, causes trouble
April 9, 2021
Not part of the Chalet School series but it might as well be. Set in an English girl's school (St Helen's), the "middle girls" decide to hate on the house mistress that replaces the one they have had pashes on all this time. Little do they know she is an "old girl" who knows more about the school spirit than they do.
True to form there is more than one hair breadth 'scape and a couple of the girls have to spend days or weeks in the San recuperating. This is Brent-Dyer's world, after all. We even hear of a death-defying deed done on the other side of the world that affects the girls rather closely!
Dyer doesn't gloss over events as much as she was wont to do in her Chalet School books; we actually see classroom interaction, talk between teachers, etc. That was definitely an improvement IMO.
True to form there is more than one hair breadth 'scape and a couple of the girls have to spend days or weeks in the San recuperating. This is Brent-Dyer's world, after all. We even hear of a death-defying deed done on the other side of the world that affects the girls rather closely!
Dyer doesn't gloss over events as much as she was wont to do in her Chalet School books; we actually see classroom interaction, talk between teachers, etc. That was definitely an improvement IMO.
February 7, 2021
The Middle House are determined to hate the replacement for their beloved Miss Lansing, but Angela Oswald has a few surprises for them...
As a short 1930s school story, this book is definitely on a par with similar volumes by writers like Irene Mossop and Mary Gervaise. As a book by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, it has some familiar elements and phrases - girls get up a play to be performed illicitly at night; hot milk is a panacea; the prefects are more to be feared than the mistresses, and so on - but lacks many of the things that give most of her books their charm. We’re given almost no setting for the school, and the book focuses almost entirely on one set of girls, though EBD can’t help giving us the staff point of view. I don’t find the idea of a girl feeling like dancing when she steals a moment alone in the moonlight entirely ridiculous, though it’s a scene more suited to Oxenham than Brent-Dyer. There are ridiculous coincidences - one doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess who the ‘A O’ who rescued Barbara’s baby sister from
crocodiles might be - but in general this is a fun quick read. The only thing which spoils it is the use of the term ‘natives’ to refer to Indians: only a few years later EBD would give us an Indian girl at the Chalet School, treated by her schoolmates as an equal.
As a short 1930s school story, this book is definitely on a par with similar volumes by writers like Irene Mossop and Mary Gervaise. As a book by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, it has some familiar elements and phrases - girls get up a play to be performed illicitly at night; hot milk is a panacea; the prefects are more to be feared than the mistresses, and so on - but lacks many of the things that give most of her books their charm. We’re given almost no setting for the school, and the book focuses almost entirely on one set of girls, though EBD can’t help giving us the staff point of view. I don’t find the idea of a girl feeling like dancing when she steals a moment alone in the moonlight entirely ridiculous, though it’s a scene more suited to Oxenham than Brent-Dyer. There are ridiculous coincidences - one doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess who the ‘A O’ who rescued Barbara’s baby sister from
crocodiles might be - but in general this is a fun quick read. The only thing which spoils it is the use of the term ‘natives’ to refer to Indians: only a few years later EBD would give us an Indian girl at the Chalet School, treated by her schoolmates as an equal.
January 13, 2021
Very short novel, less than 100 pages, but very eventful. The story is a about a new house mistress at a boarding school for girls, who substitutes a beloved teacher who has left the school. Because of that, the girls under her care (the middles, around 14 years olds, led by a girl called Barbara) are hostile and determined not to like her. The story, as could be expected, is about how the new mistress earns the girls' trust.
As it was so short, there were not many details about how the girls try to wage war against their new housemistress. There's just little time. There is always something going on. School plays, fires, rescues... always something.
Rather sentimental and featuring extraordinary coincidences. Not great literature, but I found it charming and entertaining.
As it was so short, there were not many details about how the girls try to wage war against their new housemistress. There's just little time. There is always something going on. School plays, fires, rescues... always something.
Rather sentimental and featuring extraordinary coincidences. Not great literature, but I found it charming and entertaining.
January 24, 2023
Quite a hard read. Although the characters were all quite fleshed out and had little quirks the story itself is lacking a little
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews