Title: Friends in the Fourth
Author: Sheena WIlkinson
Publisher: Bettany Press
Date: 2007
Pages: 365
Format: Paperback
Description
In this clear and elegantly written study of friendship in the girls’ school novel, Sheena Wilkinson subjects to close examination the girls’ school stories of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer and Antonia Forest and adult novels set in schools and colleges by such authors as Antonia White and Rosamund Lehmann.
By treating both genres as worthy of the literary attention, she demonstrated not only the links between the girls school story and the adult school novel, but also the debt owed by the latter to the former in their treatment of the important female space that is women’s friendship.
Friends in the Fourth is a must for all those who have ever made a friend through collecting girls’ school stories, or who read the books because they recall girlhood friendships, or who just want to clarify why they read them.
