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The Chalet School #27
Bride Leads the Chalet School
Bride Leads the Chalet School
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
3 people are currently reading
136 people want to read
About the author
Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
171 books113 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 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 26, 2017
This is one of the last really good Chalet books; the few later ones I own are considerably weaker than this. This is charming and decent. It's got great family moments (this series should have more of the Bettanys!) and Bride is a strong character. Not sweet or pretty, but decisive and a strong leader.
There's a strange discussion of class when it comes to Diana: she's a snob because she's rich, but she would be teased if people found out her father's money came from glue manufacturing? And yet she has a "low class" Cockney accent and whiny tone of voice everyone can hear? There's a weird tension there.
(Note: too many people are beautiful in this series.)
Anyway, this is really good. It bounces between the Middles, the prefects, the staff, and the Bettanys, and it manages to tell interesting stories about all of them.
I love this series; what can I say. I do not regret buying these 12 new-to-me titles this past month. I'm still waiting for five of those titles, and really looking forward to them.
There's a strange discussion of class when it comes to Diana: she's a snob because she's rich, but she would be teased if people found out her father's money came from glue manufacturing? And yet she has a "low class" Cockney accent and whiny tone of voice everyone can hear? There's a weird tension there.
(Note: too many people are beautiful in this series.)
Anyway, this is really good. It bounces between the Middles, the prefects, the staff, and the Bettanys, and it manages to tell interesting stories about all of them.
I love this series; what can I say. I do not regret buying these 12 new-to-me titles this past month. I'm still waiting for five of those titles, and really looking forward to them.
June 13, 2013
I have a soft spot for Bride Leads the Chalet School because it's one of those books where Important Things Happen. This is one of the ways that the Chalet School is almost impenetrable should you enter it at the wrong point. There are books full of the exploits of daughter X of pupil Y who married Doctor Z and Oh No Not That Time When Julie Lucy Had Peritonitis. This is the book in which the latter happens and in a sort of very wrong way, it's a massive relief to get there at last. After reading "oh no, you don't want to remind them about the time when poor Ju nearly died" and "Oh she's going to die because she got hiccups" for what felt like a thousand books, I finally get to read about the saga.
Other things happen in Bride Leads The Chalet School. We've lost the wonderfully named Loveday Perowne who gets to go off to the *best* future. We gain the practically legendary Diana Skelton to the school. And even though she's recycling the school merger plot, Brent-Dyer recycles it to great effect.
What's also pleasing in this book is being able to see more of the Bettany house. Mollie and Dick Bettany are some of my favourite characters and the sidelining of them to India at the start of the series always feels like I'm being cheated out of them. I love being able to see the Bettany family just being their family. It's always a pleasure to see Brent-Dyer just ease herself into familial surroundings rather than throwing people off mountains and into crevasses. When she was good, she was very good and caught the relationships between people perfectly. And the Bettany moments are full of that.
Other things happen in Bride Leads The Chalet School. We've lost the wonderfully named Loveday Perowne who gets to go off to the *best* future. We gain the practically legendary Diana Skelton to the school. And even though she's recycling the school merger plot, Brent-Dyer recycles it to great effect.
What's also pleasing in this book is being able to see more of the Bettany house. Mollie and Dick Bettany are some of my favourite characters and the sidelining of them to India at the start of the series always feels like I'm being cheated out of them. I love being able to see the Bettany family just being their family. It's always a pleasure to see Brent-Dyer just ease herself into familial surroundings rather than throwing people off mountains and into crevasses. When she was good, she was very good and caught the relationships between people perfectly. And the Bettany moments are full of that.
November 18, 2012
Chambers hardback edition. Not bad, not the best in the series but nor is it forgettable, and a lot less casual racism than some of the others in the series. Fairly enjoyable.
May 29, 2017
This is one of the better island-set stories. Bride is promoted to Head Girl when the current girl leaves to go to The Argentine to claim an inheritance (I do wonder if EBD opened her atlas and stuck in a pin!). As usual she asks for time to think it over - I'm sure it comes as a bolt from the blue to every girl who is ever appointed Head Girl, but at least Bride had a good reason to be surprised - but a chat with her sister Peggy (also an ex-Head Girl) as they prepare the tea is enough to persuade her that she should accept the post. Back at school there are more surprises: another Chalet School has closed down and many of those pupils have moved to our Chalet School but, alas, they have strange notions and take some time to settle into our Chalet School ways.
Bride has the Head Girl's usual problems, magnified by the new girls' lack of discipline and earns the enmity of one girl in particular, whose shocking behaviour gives Miss Annersley the chance to temper her justice with mercy. As usual EBD evades the exact method as "No one ever knew what passed ... for neither of the two ever spoke of it to anyone."
Other drama: Julie Lucy ignores 'tummy pains' and then has to be rushed to hospital for an emergency operation. She pulls through but Miss Annersley has another opportunity to demonstrate her ability to handle girls when breaking the news to Julie's sisters.
The other main event is The Sale and it's one of the better ones, I think. The prefects choose to base it on The Crown of Success by A.L.O.E. and the précis that Bride gives and the description of the stalls made me want to read the book. (I did and was disappointed as EBD hadn't mentioned the heavy-handed and long-winded Victorian moralising.)
Bride has the Head Girl's usual problems, magnified by the new girls' lack of discipline and earns the enmity of one girl in particular, whose shocking behaviour gives Miss Annersley the chance to temper her justice with mercy. As usual EBD evades the exact method as "No one ever knew what passed ... for neither of the two ever spoke of it to anyone."
Other drama: Julie Lucy ignores 'tummy pains' and then has to be rushed to hospital for an emergency operation. She pulls through but Miss Annersley has another opportunity to demonstrate her ability to handle girls when breaking the news to Julie's sisters.
The other main event is The Sale and it's one of the better ones, I think. The prefects choose to base it on The Crown of Success by A.L.O.E. and the précis that Bride gives and the description of the stalls made me want to read the book. (I did and was disappointed as EBD hadn't mentioned the heavy-handed and long-winded Victorian moralising.)
January 1, 2024
I like all the books set in the Island and the girls that are featured in these. This was a typical chalet school story. With a new head girl, not one but several girls joining from the 'other chalet school' and the resultant feuds. Some serious events (Julie falling sick), a sale but no great adventures of the kind they have in Tirol or Oberland. It was strange - but not unwelcoming - to see Sir James Talbot and Commander something playing the key roles at the sale instead of the usual Russels and the Maynards. All in all a pretty average Chalet School book.
July 12, 2019
I've been missing this book from my set and was thrilled to get it earlier this year - and it didn't disappoint. Ties up lots of loose ends and several good stories
November 2, 2020
Another relation of the Chalet School's Founder becomes Head Girl...
January 22, 2022
A middling Chalet School. Not one of the best but entertaining.
February 26, 2023
Always interesting when someone properly loses their temper as it doesn't happen often
June 19, 2023
I enjoyed this. I wish we could have seen just a bit more of Diana. There are hints at her motivations but they aren't fleshed out enough to be really compelling.
August 6, 2016
At last Bride is where she belongs, ie in the post of Head Girl. And it's a tough job - at one point she has to take prep with Upper Second, which presumably (as they are now over at St Agnes' in Carnbach) involves a ferry journey there and back.
The editing is particularly bad (this could just be because I only have the 1989 Armada paperback but I suspect not) and although I like this particular group of prefects, this isn't a favourite story. Diana's 'reform' is weak ('Somehow - how, even she herself never really knew - Miss Annersley had managed to pierce the thick skin of self-satisfaction, conceit and vanity' etc etc) and (as we find out in 'Changes') short-lived, the Sale is downright confusing (a map of the world? Made out of flower arrangements? And how, exactly, are dolls' clothes adjectives?), and it hardly ever stops raining. And when did Miss Stephenson become resident art mistress, and why, given that Herr Laubach is the one helping with the map of the world at the Sale? And why does Diana have to apologise to Audrey when (according to Bride's letter to Joey) it was Madge she was rude to in front of the middles? It was Emerence that cheeked Audrey ... do keep up.
I'm really not sure I'm going to make it as far as donning the gentian blue and enrolling at the new Oberland branch. But onwards and upwards ...
The editing is particularly bad (this could just be because I only have the 1989 Armada paperback but I suspect not) and although I like this particular group of prefects, this isn't a favourite story. Diana's 'reform' is weak ('Somehow - how, even she herself never really knew - Miss Annersley had managed to pierce the thick skin of self-satisfaction, conceit and vanity' etc etc) and (as we find out in 'Changes') short-lived, the Sale is downright confusing (a map of the world? Made out of flower arrangements? And how, exactly, are dolls' clothes adjectives?), and it hardly ever stops raining. And when did Miss Stephenson become resident art mistress, and why, given that Herr Laubach is the one helping with the map of the world at the Sale? And why does Diana have to apologise to Audrey when (according to Bride's letter to Joey) it was Madge she was rude to in front of the middles? It was Emerence that cheeked Audrey ... do keep up.
I'm really not sure I'm going to make it as far as donning the gentian blue and enrolling at the new Oberland branch. But onwards and upwards ...
March 25, 2024
Bride gets a shock when she's asked to take on a new responsibility, and has an extremely difficult term. A progressive school has closed down, and several new girls have arrived at the Chalet School including a very pretty but rebellious girl called Diana, who refuses to accept the authority of the prefects and gives Bride an extremely hard time.
Amongst run-of-the-mill lessons, and a lengthy description of the end-of-term sale, there are a few philosophical discussions about education included, outlining the ideas of the time - and it becomes clear that the author was very against autonomous learning, despite her progressive theories about inductive teaching and the importance of leisure time to balance work.
Not particularly special, but some interesting moments including a few poingnant sections, and overall, pleasant light reading.
Latest longer review: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/...
Amongst run-of-the-mill lessons, and a lengthy description of the end-of-term sale, there are a few philosophical discussions about education included, outlining the ideas of the time - and it becomes clear that the author was very against autonomous learning, despite her progressive theories about inductive teaching and the importance of leisure time to balance work.
Not particularly special, but some interesting moments including a few poingnant sections, and overall, pleasant light reading.
Latest longer review: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/...
March 22, 2010
A few days before term begins, the Bettany family have an unexpected visitor, Miss Annersley comes for a visit. She has some quite surprising news, the previous Head Girl, Loveday Perowne has left school, and she wants Bride to be the new Head Girl!
This term turns out to be quite tough for Bride, not only does she have to deal with the normal Head Girl duties, but another school has closed down, and quite a few of them have joined the Chalet School. These girls were allowed to run wild in their previous school, with little discipline, and everyone in the school has a hard time dealing with them.
One girl in particular, Diana Skelton, decides that she has a vendetta with Bride, and ends up wrecking Bride's study!
However, with all these problems, Bride still manages to come out on top, and carries on the tradition of being a wonderful Head Girl.
This term turns out to be quite tough for Bride, not only does she have to deal with the normal Head Girl duties, but another school has closed down, and quite a few of them have joined the Chalet School. These girls were allowed to run wild in their previous school, with little discipline, and everyone in the school has a hard time dealing with them.
One girl in particular, Diana Skelton, decides that she has a vendetta with Bride, and ends up wrecking Bride's study!
However, with all these problems, Bride still manages to come out on top, and carries on the tradition of being a wonderful Head Girl.
July 21, 2015
Another lovely story full of happenings! One girl going off to South America to collect her inheritance, one with peritonitis, the awful new girl Diana and her horrible deeds, and of course the annual sale. Bride takes over as head girl through all this and lives to tell the tale!
August 26, 2024
Another re-read; I am hoping to read the entire series in order for the first time this year but I keep stopping to read other books
Bride is a good character and although the plot lines are starting to become repetitive, this is an enjoyable book within the series
Bride is a good character and although the plot lines are starting to become repetitive, this is an enjoyable book within the series
May 20, 2009
One of my favourites! Which makes sense considering Bride Bettany was always one of my very favourite Chaletians. :) Kindly lent to me by Shawne.
October 22, 2014
Of my three or four favourite Chalet School books (Exile, New Mistress, this one and maybe At War) this is the one I've read least often. Everytime I read it I wonder why I don't have my own copy.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews