Angela Brazil - Influence

Influence

Angela Brazil is frequently held to be largely responsible for establishing the girls' school story genre, which exerted a major effect on the reading practices of girls for decades after she began publishing her novels, although this belief has been challenged. Her motifs and ideas have become a common part of popular imagination since publication and inspired many imitators and successors. J.K. Rowlings' Harry Potter series draws upon many elements of English public school education fiction that Brazil's work helped to establish.

Towards the end of the 20th century, girls' school stories had in many respects become seen as a cliché, with standard character types such as the oddball but courageous new girl and the practical but fair headmistress, and recurring scenes such as a midnight feast, pranks, heroic rescues and concert at the end of term. Many parodies of these types of stories have been produced. However, when Brazil first wrote schoolgirl tales she was not simply repeating established norms in fiction for young women, and her approach (together with other girls' writers of this period) was innovative and actually establishing new ideas about girls' lives, which were simplified and turned into stock motifs by later writers.

Popular writers of girls' school stories who certainly read Angela Brazil's books include Elinor Brent-Dyer with her Chalet School series, and Enid Blyton with her tales about Malory Towers and St Clares. Brent-Dyer, whose first volume in the Chalet School series appeared in 1925, published 57 more books in the series and these books were still selling 150,000 copies a year in the late 1990s. Dorita Fairlie Bruce and Elsie Oxenham should also be mentioned. Despite the fact that many of these stories included archaic motifs and representations, they still remain popular.