Dilly Goes to Ambergate

This school-based novel about the complications of settling down at a new school and making friends was originally published in 1955 by Blackie and Son Limited. It was written just before the author wrote 'The Two Families' and in the middle of writing the Melling Series. The author wrote the story because she wanted to write a story in a completely different setting - here Ambergate Public School for really wealthy schools, set idyllically on the South coast in Kent. This 180 page paperback edition is a 2011 reprint from the stable of Girls Gone By Publishers, ISBN 9781847451132. Storyline: Thirteen-year-old red-haired Dilly Fielding leaves gloomy South London Graydon Orphanage for her first term at Ambergate - a famous girls' school to which she has won a scholarship - with a deep feeling of relief. Suddenly so near to a freedom she had often dreamed of but never expected, Dilly looks forward happily to her new life away from Graydon - for she had to draw and paint just as she had to breathe, and at the orphanage, there was no time for "foolish things". But with the freedom and the advantages - the fun of the day-to-day school work and sport - come the difficulties. Dilly must struggle to adapt herself to a standard of behaviour far removed from that of Graydon. Her proud and obstinate nature, her hot temper and impulsive actions, bring trouble at first and certainly make it hard for the other girls to be friendly. Dilly is highly intelligent, but equally prickly and rude, temperamental, and always suspicious that she is being looked down on. Throughout the misunderstandings and complications of this first term, Dilly is confronted by tactful friendship of a class-mate, Jane, and by the love Jane's family extend for her, and, despite the clashing of impoverished and wealthy, privileged worlds, it is they who finally bring to her the greatest happiness she has ever known


Genre: Children's Fiction