Dimsie Goes To School is the first of the Dimsie books by author Dorita Fairlie Bruce. It was first published in 1921 under the title The Senior Prefect and changed in 1925 to Dimsie Goes To School.[1] The book was illustrated by Wal Paget.

Dimsie Goes To School
1929 Oxford University Press Hardcover Edition
AuthorDorita Fairlie Bruce
IllustratorWal Paget
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SeriesDimsie
GenreChildren's novel
PublisherOxford University Press
Publication date
1921
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages277 pp
Followed byDimsie Moves Up 

The protagonist of the book is ten-year-old Daphne Isabel Maitland, who is nicknamed Dimsie, on account of her initials.[2] The book begins with Dimsie travelling in a train and about to start school at the Jane Willard Foundation, where her older cousin (also Daphne) is a prefect.

The popularity of the continuing series led to Dimsie Goes to School being reprinted several more times by the OUP, and in the 1950s by Spring Books. The illustrations kept pace with changing fashions, as the following two illustrations of the same scene demonstrate. In the 1983 edition from John Goodchild Publishers the text was "unfortunately radically modernised".[3]

Frontispiece, by Wal Paget, from the 1925 Oxford University Press edition
Cover of a late 1950s Spring Books edition

Critical reception edit

Dimsie Goes to School is included in The Guardian's 2009 list, "A book lover's guide to building a brilliant children's library".[4]

References edit

  1. ^ Löfgren, Eva Margareta (1993). Schoolmates of the Long-Ago: Motifs and Archetypes in Dorita Fairlie Bruce's Boarding School Stories. Stehag, Sweden: Symposium Graduale.
  2. ^ Hunt, Peter (2004). International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Routledge. p. 471. ISBN 0415290538. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
  3. ^ Sims, Sue; Clare, Hilary (2020). The Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories. Vol. 1. Girls Gone By. p. 123. ISBN 9781847452573.
  4. ^ Mangan, Lucy (23 January 2009). "A book lover's guide to building a brilliant children's library". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2024.