Behind the Chalet School

Bettany Press is delighted to have been given the opportunity to publish this revised edition of Helen McClelland's popular biography. New information has made it possible to give a much fuller picture of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's early life and to fill in some of the gaps that remained in her story. One or two old questions have been answered, and some 'missing' people have been found, including Elinor's vanished half-brother.

Many sections of the book have been not only revised but expanded; more details are included about Chalet School locations; and a whole new chapter covers Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's birth centenary and the amazing growth of the Chalet School legend during the 1990s. The book also includes several new illustrations and an appendix on the sometimes problematic chronology of the Chalet School series.

"Documentary research and many interviews with friends and relatives of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer are put together in an absorbing book which presents her in the round, her unattractive traits and her passionate ambitions, her abundant energy and her eccentricities. Students of children's literature will be especially grateful for the careful analysis of readers' opinions and fan letters ... The fact that the biographer has not tried to sum up or dogmatise does her credit; the facts she has amassed are used to delineate a fallible, complex and fascinating person." Margery Fisher