Their strange habits and even stranger powers soon bring comic chaos to the classrooms of St. Winifred’s convent school. As the angelic pair struggle to do good in their unpredictable fashion, the students struggle to stay out of their way!

    Brent-Dyer, Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Nancy, Springdale and Dimsie stories, and Enid Blyton’s boarding school books, A World of Girls proves conclusively that they provided active role models and positive images for a massive readership of girls and women.

    Underlying all arguments was the folk wisdom which declared that women could not live and work together. To counteract such beliefs, women’s colleges tried to create a special kind of space and new role models that would allow women to exist for a short time in idyllic (or, at least, idealized) conditions. The debate over women’s education, for the good or ill of society, generated a great deal of "print," including short stories and novels. Shirley Marchalonis guides us through the history of this fiction, its depiction of the complexities of the college experience, and the conflicting attitudes that teetered between fascination and fear, celebration and regret. Using novels, short stories, and some juvenile fiction from 1865 to 1940--all of it specifically about college “girls”--she examines these ideas, the way they developed over time, and their significance in understanding women’s education and women’s history. The debate over separate colleges for women continues to this day and can be better understood in the context of this informative and entertaining look at the past.

    The college woman was described and defined in a period when women’s higher education was still socially suspect.    While other scholars have argued that the Progressive Era was the “golden age” for women’s single-sex education, pointing to the many positive depictions of the women’s college student, Inness suggests that these representations actually helped to perpetuate the status quo and did little to advance women’s social rights.

    Second-century Roman Britain is the setting for epic battle, high drama, bravery and romance in these two stories for young readers.A Circlet of Oak Leaves gradually reveals the mystery behind humble horse-breeder Araco's award for outstanding bravery, and Eagle's Egg follows the story of Quintus, a young standard-bearer, determined to be promoted so that he can marry the girl that he loves.