Anya Joyce asked Carol Goodman:

Where does the common setting of boarding schools come from?

Carol Goodman I'm not sure if you mean in general, like as a literary trope, or for me personally, so I'll try to answer both. Boarding School Stories were popular in the first decades of the twentieth century, generally divided into boys' school stories and girls' school stories. There were hundreds of these written by writers such as Dorothea Moore and Angela Brazil. One of my favorites, A PLUCKY SCHOOLGIRL, sits on a shelf above my desk. I drew on these for BLYTHEWOOD, invoking some of the traditions of midnight feasts, tea times, and adventures and also the spirit of loyalty and friendship that pervades these books.

Why am I drawn to boarding schools as a setting? Good question. I never went to one, except for one summer when I went to Northfield Mount Hermon in Massachusetts. I was very enamored of the idea of boarding schools and begged my parents to let me go to one, but they refused (my mother thought it was where people sent their troubled children). When I went to college I got some of the feeling of the boarding school and many of the people I went to college with had gone to boarding school. I probably romanticize the idea of boarding schools, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I keep being drawn to them (and colleges and artists colonies) because I like to set a book in a closed world.

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