British and American school stories, 1910-1960: fiction, femininity, and friendship

This volume examines school and college fiction for girls in Britain and the United States, written in the first half of the twentieth century, to explore the formation and ideologies of feminine identity.

Nancy G. Rosoff and Stephanie Spencer develop a transnational framework that recognises how both constructed and essential femininities transcend national boundaries.

They discuss the significance and performance of female friendship across time and place, which is central to the development of the genre, and how it functioned as an important means of informal education.

Stories by Jessie Graham Flower, Pauline Lester, Alice Ross Colver, Elinor Brent-Dyer, and Dorita Fairlie Bruce are set within their historical context and then used to explore aspects of sociability, authority, responsibility, domesticity, and possibility.