Ethel Talbot

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I'm sure one or two here have mentioned that they have enjoyed Ethel Talbot's (1880-1944) school stories for girls,but I thought this title and its accompanying blurb looked rather good!

Title: Surprise Island
Author: Ethel Talbot
Illustrator: Unknown
Year: 1949
Publisher: Blackie & Son
Binding: Hardback
Remarks: c.1949
Book Condition: Near Very Good
Jacket Condition: No Jacket


Description: A ripping yarn about a group of friends who travel to a mysterious island in search of adventure. Very much in the style of Enid Blyton's Five on a Treasure Island, minus the lashings of ginger beer!
Highly recommended for fans of the Famous Five who want to try something new!!

Pictorial boards. Corners slightly bumped. Some foxing to the front cover and along tips of the page edges. Brown silhouette left behind by bookmark spanning two pages (bookmark still in place). Small loss to spine at head. Award plate affixed to ffep is dated 1951. No illustrations other than a stunning b&w frontispiece. No date of publication, but assumed to be from 1949.

A very rare book.

Measures: 7.6″ × 5.2″ (19 cm × 13 cm). 8vo. 96 pp.

Price: £14.00

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I wondered if anyone has a copy of this book at all or has perhaps read it?

[Katharine]

I've got an Ethel Talbot book somewhere in the house, but I can't remember which one. I don't think it's 'Surprise Island', but I'll try and track it down.

[Katharine]

Well I've tracked down two Ethel Talbot books. One is called Two On An Island, I've only read it once, several years ago, but from what I can remember it was quite a nice little tale. The other is Bunch at Boarding School, that's in my 'still to read' pile, so I don't know what it's like.

[Katharine]

I've just finished reading 'Peggy's Last Term' by Ethel Talbot. I've read a couple of her other books and stories, and have a vague feeling I quite enjoyed them, although don't remember much about them. This book felt a bit 'clunky' in it's style, and a quick Google suggest it was the first book she wrote, so possibly her writing became a bit smoother over the years.

Her most annoying trait was to have lots of sentences left unfinished. I appreciate that some school girls may well have spoken like that, but even the headmistress had that habit! The other odd thing was the introduction of a major plot line about half way through the story, which seemed really strange to me.

One fascinating part of the book is the size of the school: a total of 32 pupils - that's only 2 more than a single class would have been at any one time when I was at school.

Interestingly, the style is very different from Enid Blyton, in that food is hardly mentioned, nor are the lessons, other than a brief reference to doing Latin prep.

This is definitely an author I will continue to look out for - it seems that she wrote quite a lot of books, although there doesn't seem to be a great deal of information available about her - which shows what a fantastic site the Enid Blyton Society's is.

SPOILER ALERT

The book has a general timeless fee about it and could have been set any time from the Edwardian era up until the 1950s, and then suddenly it emerges it is the summer of 1918, and the school is within firing range of enemy gun ships!

The ending was good though - I thought I'd worked out a very predictable ending, but actually there was an interesting twist.