St. Clare's series
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St. Clare's is a series of six books written by British children's author Enid Blyton about a boarding school of that name. The series follows the heroines Patricia ("Pat") and Isabel O'Sullivan from their first year at St. Clare's on. Other characters include Alison O'Sullivan (the twins' cousin), Hilary Wentworth, Carlotta Brown (an ex-circus girl), and Bobby Ellis.
In the first book, The Twins at St. Clare's, the twins Pat and Isabel do not want to go to St. Clare's. Their parents decide to send them there, anyway, saying that they were spoiled at their fancy prep school Redroofs. At their new school, the twins earn the nickname "the stuck-up twins", and are initially quite unpopular. However, through their basic kindness and fairness, they gain the affections of the other girls, and eventually settle down. They meet Janet, who loves tricks, Hilary, who is head of the form, Alison, their feather headed cousin, and many more people. The characters tend to be stereotypes and are very similar to the set of characters in the Malory Towers series which Blyton also wrote.
Owen Dudley Edwards suggests that the choice of surname of the protagonists derives from Blyton's desire to resist national stereotyping, following an Irish Republican Army bicycle bomb attack in Coventry in 1939[1]
The six books are:
- The Twins at St. Clare's (1941)
- The O'Sullivan Twins (1942)
- Summer Term at St. Clare's (1943)
- Second Form at St. Clare's (1944)
- Claudine at St.Clare's (1944)
- Fifth Formers at St. Clare's (1945)
Characters included:
- Pat O'Sullivan (Forms 1-6)
- Isabel O'Sullivan (Forms 1-6)
- Janet Robins (Forms 1-6)
- Hilary Wentworth (Forms 1-6)
- Doris Elward (Forms 1-6)
- Kathleen Gregory (Form 1) (oddly is mentioned as a fourth former in Form 4)
- Vera Johns (Form 1)
- Alison O'Sullivan (Forms 1-6)
- Lucy Oriell (Form 1)
- Margery Fenworthy (Form 1)
- Sadie Greene (Form 1)
- Carlotta Brown (Forms 1-6)
- Prudence Arnold (Form 1)
- Pamela Boardman (Form 1, 3-4) )
- Roberta "Bobby" Ellis (Forms 1-6)
- Gladys Hillman (Forms 2-6)
- Mirabel Unwin (Forms 2-6)
- Rachel Denman (Form 3)
- Fern Francis (Form 3)
- Libby Francis (Form 3)
- Rt. Hon. Angela Favorleigh (Forms 4-6)
- Pauline Jones (Forms 4-5)
- Claudine (Forms 4-6)
- Eileen Patterson (Form 4)
- Alma Pudden (Form 5)
- Felicity Ray (Form 5)
- Anne-Marie Longden (Forms 5-6)
- Phyllis "Fizz" Bentley (Form 6)
- Morag (Form 6)
- Priscilla (Form 6, is expelled)
Recently, Enid Blyton Limited have copyrighted two further books in the series, written by Pamela Cox:
- The Third Form at St. Clare's (2000) - set before Claudine at St Clare's
- The Sixth Form at St. Clare's (2000)
Blyton wrote two other series about life at a boarding school: Malory Towers and the Naughtiest Girl series.
[edit] References
- ^ British Children's Fiction in the Second World War. Owen Dudley Edwards. Edinburgh University Press 2007. ISBN 978 0 7486 1651 0
[edit] External links
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