This paper explores the transitional space between fiction and reality in the world of the schoolgirl in the UK and USA in the first half of the twentieth century. It discusses whether the imaginary worlds of school conjured up in stories by popular authors such as Angela Brazil and ‘Pauline Lester’ (Josephine Chase) are of any value to the historian in our search for evidence for the gendered education of the schoolchild. The stories may have little literary merit but I argue that with careful theoretical framing they offer insights into contemporary attitudes towards, and expectations of, middle and upper-class girls’ education on two sides of the Atlantic. This paper explores both written text and illustrations in a selection of school stories and offers some thoughts about how we can begin to theorise the transition from, or the gap between, fiction and reality. It argues that an understanding of the historical past as itself a construct offers up rich possibilities where the school story is no more or less an accurate reflection of ‘what actually happened’ than conventional histories of schools whose existence was in bricks and mortar, rather than the mind of the impressionable adolescent. The paper takes up the methodological challenges created by materialities as evidence, highlighted by Lawn et al in Silences and Images (1999). It draws on deconstructionist historical debates on the relationship and transitions between ‘facts’ and ‘interpretation’ in order to offer a contribution to discussions of sources and interpretations for histories of education (Booth, 2006; Mitchell, 2010; Munslow, 2003). I suggest that although these novels have been treated with much disdain, their enormous popularity with their readers justifies our reading of them, not as accurate reflections on schooling as it was, but as a way into recognising the power of fiction as informal education for girls of all classes in the reproduction of gender roles in the first half of the twentieth century. However much critics may have dismissed these stories or refused them space on school library shelves the genre has been recognised as substantial (Cadogan and Craig, 1976; Auchmuty,1992; Marchalonis, 1995). Histories of girls’ schooling offer a chronology of development (Avery, 1991). The next step is to understand the relationship between the two and to theorise how truth and fiction are not strangers but close relations.

Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls: The Appeal of the Girls’ School Story (The Women’s Press, 1992) Gillian Avery, The Best Type of Girl: The History of Girls’ Independent Schools (Deutsch, 1991) Douglas Booth, ‘Evidence Revisited: Interpreting historical materials in sport history, Rethinking History 9 (4) 2006, 459-483 Angela Brazil (e.g.) The Luckiest Girl in the School (Blackie, 1916) Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig, You’re a Brick, Angela! A New Look at Girls’ Fiction from 1839 to 1975 (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976) Martin Lawn, Ian Grosvenor, Kate Rousmaniere, Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom (Peter Lang, 1999) Pauline Lester (Josephine Chase) (e.g) Marjorie Dean: High School Freshman (A.L.Burt, 1917) Shirley Marchalonis, College Girls: A Century in Fiction (Rutgers University Press, 1995) Katharine Mitchell, ‘Narrativizing women’s experiences in late nineteenth century Italy through domestic fiction’ Rethinking History 14 (4) 2010, 483-501 Alan Munslow, The New History (Pearson, 2003)