Mabel Esther Allan

[Judith Crabb]

I remember reading books by Mabel Esther Allan but never owned any and so didn't re-read them. I remember enjoying them but not much about them. I have a few on my shelves and thought I'd start reading (or re-reading) them. 'Changes for the Challoners' is the first alphabetically. When I opened it, it starts with the title. No frontispiece and there are no illustrations at all. Does anyone else have a copy and could tell me what mine is missing (if anything)? It's set in the Roman town of Francaster (I'll google and see if it's real).
Perhaps you've got a favourite Allan. She's pretty prolific so may be you've got a top five.

[timv]

I think that Francaster is meant to be a disguised Chester, from the Roman walls, the 'Rows' of two-storey shops with long upper balconies above street level etc. Mabel Esther Allan (born 1915) was brought up on the Wirral, and the area features on and off in her books; she later taught at a primary school in Liverpool and frequently has characters from the North-West moving to the South of England and having difficulty integrating, eg teenager Joan in 'The Ballet Family' whose piano-teacher mother dies so she has to leave Oldham and live with her ballet-star aunt and orchestra conductor uncle in Bloomsbury, London. Cheshire also features in MEA's 'Trouble at Melville Manor'.

There 's an online detailed guide to MEA books the 'Mabel Project', at the Wordpress website, but this only covers her 1940s - early 1950s books and nothing seems to have been added to it for years ; I keep an eye on this for any new data on this now largely forgotten author. She's a favourite of mine for her careful details of geography (Europe as well as UK) and diversity of backgrounds for her characters, and she also dares to put in girls with cultural interests eg in local folklore and music / stories in her Welsh, Scots, and Manx school books. Her books are set in schools and among families across the UK, and feature progressive schools with a 'School Council' and optional lessons (a bit like Enid's Whyteleafe) so she was clearly another fan of A S Neill's Summerhill School - and she also features circus girls struggling to settle down at boarding-school and being thought to be 'wild' like Carlotta. She crosses paths with Enid on some settings and storylines in her 1940s-50s books, with Malcolm Saville on others (Norfolk features in her 'Margaret Finds A Future', set at West Runton near Cromer and at MS's Blakeney), and Elinor Brent Dyer on others (she set 'Swiss School' in an Anglo-Continental school in the Swiss Alps near Interlaken, like EBD's Swiss Chalet School series, and occasionally had very similar storylines to hers). She featured the Chilterns, near Bourne End, in 'Chiltern School' and 'Cilia of Chiltern's Edge'. plus some of her 'Drina' ballet books (written as 'Jean Estoril').

My favourites are:
The School on North Barrule , 1952 - set at a progressive Isle of Man boarding-school, unique as far as I know for a British author, and featuring Manx culture and legend and the TT motor-cycle races. The sites, as usual for MEA, are real , and there is a family mystery for Our Heroine to solve - what happened to her Manx aunts who broke off relations with her father for marrying in England and leaving the island, and now seem to have left Man too.

Over The Sea To School, 1950 - first of a trilogy set at a progressive school on Skye, probably based on real life Dunvegan castle ('Dundonay House School' and the nearby castle) on whose family's history I have written a book. Features Highlands culture and a snobbish English-educated London girl resenting being 'dumped' at the Skye school by her mother and refusing to make friends with her working-class cousin as her mother is a cleaner for the Laird. The latter has been living abroad, and when he returns he behaves oddly - what is he hiding?

The MacIains of Glen Gillean -featuring a 'wild' teenage family of Highlanders, the children of a clan chief, resenting him inviting their rather prim and sensible English-educated girl cousin to take charge of them while he is in hospital. Ends up with a dramatic , Ransome-style heath fire in the glen.

The School on Cloud Ridge, 1952 - another progressive school, this time in the Cotswolds - with Wyndstane on the Water and other sites from Holiday Summer cropping up again and references to the action in that book. This time Our Heroine, a Cornish girl also featured in MEA's Cornish holiday story 'Mullion', and her friends have to cope with a girl who is not used to having few rules and being able to choose her lessons and sneers at the school - and part of the book is seen from the point of view of a teacher, which Enid never attempted (copied presumably from EBD's New Mistress At The Chalet School).

Balconies and Blue Nets, 1956 - a holiday story with the two girl protagonists of 'Trouble at Melville Manor' sent to a language school in Brittany, with intro to Breton culture. They then have to cope with a bored and disruptive French girl who wants to be thrown out so she can join her artist parents for a tour of the UK and plays up, and help the school principal's niece sort her out.

I suspect that MEA, a very prolific author, dropped out of public view (except for her Drina books) partly as her list of publishers was so large and reproduction of her titles was so difficult (as with Elsie J Oxenham) and partly as, like Enid and EBD, her publishers were pushing her to stick to a long series and drop individual books with more subtle characterization. I never saw any of her books in shops in the 1970s - probably as she was not reprinted in paperback - and only came across her as an adult.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's interesting that Mabel Esther Allan wrote about progressive schools.

I did buy one Mabel Esther Allan book in paperback as a child in the late 1970s, Tim. It was a 1976 Dent paperback of Fiona on the Fourteenth Floor and I bought it new from a bookshop called Clwyd Books in Colwyn Bay. It's about a teenage girl who goes to New York. I believe the book was first published in 1964.

[Judith Crabb]

Thanks timv for all the topographical references. It is an aspect of English children's books which I enjoyed, probably because it was so 'foreign'. The very words 'marsh' or 'castle' or 'moor' or 'mountain' was enough to get me reading just about any story, but I understand that it must be alluring to live within easy visiting range of the settings of favourite children's books.
I'm not quite sure about schools not being seen from teachers' points of view in Enid Blyton's novels. What about the French teachers, for example, where a lot of capital is made out of the fact that they don't see things from an English schoolgirl's point of view?
I have one of your recommendations - The Maclains of Glen Gillian. I'll give it a go.

[Kate Mary]

I read only one Mabel Esther Allan in my childhood, 'Black Forest Summer'. Many years later while on holiday in the Peak District I found a copy of 'The Vine-Clad Hill' in a Seagull Library edition. Since then I've bought every MEA title that Girls Gone By have published. Sixteen so far! I also have one published by Greyladies; 'In Pursuit of Clarinda'.

Mabel Esther Allan is a brilliant writer who deserves greater recognition. It's a great pity her books were never published in paperback until the GGBP editions.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It may well be the case that Mabel Esther Allan's school stories didn't make it to paperback (until the Girls Gone By editions) but some of her other books did, including the ballet series (Drina) which she wrote as Jean Estoril. As well as Fiona on the Fourteenth Floor, I've just remembered that I've got another Mabel Esther Allan paperback on my bookshelf. I haven't read it as I picked it up relatively recently from a charity shop. It's called The Flash Children and is about three siblings who move from Shropshire to Cheshire and find it difficult to settle down until they discover a beautiful but decaying Tudor house. It's a Beaver paperback dating from 1979 but the book was first published by Brockhampton Press in 1975.

[Kate Mary]

Regarding paperback editions of MEA I didn't express myself very well. It's true the Drina books by Jean Estoril were published in paperback (I've never read any of those) and some titles under her real name appeared in paperback in the 1970s and 80s when I was an adult but Mabel's books were never published in the paperback imprints of my youth, Armada, Dragon or even Puffin, which was a shame as I would have read a great deal more Mabel Esther Allen if they had been.

Interestingly some of Mabel's later titles were published in America before they appeared in the UK.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, most of my childhood paperbacks were Armadas, Dragons or Puffins too (or Knights). Other than Fiona on the Fourteenth Floor (Dent), I didn't come across any Mabel Esther Allan books as a child in the 1970s.