Gwendoline Courtney

[Kate Mary]

(Split from 'What other author are you reading at the moment?')


I'm reading a terrific adventure story - Mermaid House by Gwendoline Courtney. It's set on the Cornish coast. The Greystone family, Giles, Fay, Anthony and Peggy go to stay with their great-aunt Louisa at her house on the cliff and as the blurb says 'from the moment of their arrival mysteries abound'. It has all the right ingredients for a great mystery story; sea caves and secret passages, and strange goings-on on the cliff-top at night.

This story was only published as a book in 2011 by Girls Gone By, but it was written in the 1940s and originally published as a serial in a local newspaper The Salisbury Journal on the children's page in 1953. Well done to Girls Gone By for rescuing such a brilliant story, they say in the introduction that other Gwendoline Courtney stories have never been published in book form, I hope they get round to publishing those. Gwendoline Courtney is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors. (Excepting Enid of course).

[timv]

I had never heard of Gwendoline Courtney when I was reading Enid's books and her contemporaries for the first time in the late 1960s - early 1970s, so she had definitely 'dropped off the radar' by then. I suspect this was largely because she was unlucky in not being chosen for inclusion in the list picked by Armada for reissue, unlike other books written in the late 1940s and 1950s for a similar age-group (eg early Monica Edwards and Malcolm Saville plus the pony book authors). Possibly she was seen as old-fashioned, or did not have ponies or the sort of mysteries mysteries which were popular then.
This is a pity, as I've explored GC's books since Girls Gone By started publishing them and I agree that they're really well written and enjoyable. I liked 'Mermaid House' too, and it's a bit 'Blytonian' with its seaside mystery plus old houses on cliffs and suspected criminals lurking around. It reminded me a lot of Secret of Spiggy Holes - and there's a very unusual twist at the end that Enid never tried out! I also liked 'Torley Grange', GC's first family saga written around 1935 and set in Wiltshire near Salisbury (though it's 'dated' a bit), and the farm-based Dorset/ Wilts family book 'Long Barrow'. For those who like Ruritanian adventures with attempts to kidnap East European princes there's also 'The Grenville Garrison', set on the River Test in Hampshire,which has similarities to 'Circus of Adventure' (and probably used ideas from John Buchan about sinister East European plotters) . GC is a lot more casual about people (teenagers included) using guns than Enid so perhaps editors later decided this was too violent!

[Courtenay]

I'd never heard of Gwendoline Courtney either (must say I like her surname, even if the spelling looks wrong... ) — her books do sound worth a try! I've looked up Mermaid House and a couple of sites remark on (but don't give away) the unusual twist at the end, so now I'm intrigued... Thanks for the recommendation, Kate Mary. I'll see if I can get hold of a copy some time.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I picked up the Girls Gone By edition of Mermaid House in a secondhand shop some months ago, but goodness knows where I put it! I've read quite a few Gwendoline Courtney books, my favourites being Sally's Family (I read my mum's old copy several times as a child) and Elizabeth of the Garret Theatre. The latter was also published as Those Verney Girls and Stepmother. Both are lively, engaging stories of family life.

[Kate Mary]

I've collected all 14 Gwendoline Courtney titles that Girls Gone By have published so far and I have Elizabeth of the Garret Theatre as well. Girls Gone By published Stepmother last year but I haven't read that yet, so I don't know if the text differs from the later reprint with the changed title.

I think Sally's Family, Elizabeth of the Garret Theatre and Long Barrow (later retitled The Farm on the Downs) are her best books and these were the ones that were reprinted in Seagull Library/Children's Press editions, but all her books are very good.

[John Pickup]

I've got six books by Gwendoline Courtney including Mermaid House and the two Wild Lorings books, none of which I've read. Two I have read are excellent, The Denehurst Secret Service and We'll Done Denehurst. I would certainly recommend these.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I enjoyed both Denehurst books too, John, though I can't remember much about them now. I recall being impressed by a comment in The Denehurst Secret Service (a wartime story published in 1940) which makes a clear distinction between the Nazis and the ordinary German people. Pupils at a British school speculate that one of their schoolfellows may be German, but a girl named Elaine remarks that it wouldn't matter if she was - "we're only fighting the Nazis, not the Germans."

I've read The Grenville Garrison too, Tim, but I found it over the top and a little stilted in style. It reminded me of The Secret of Spiggy Holes as well as The Circus of Adventure, so it's interesting to hear that Mermaid House also reminded you of The Secret of Spiggy Holes.

In her foreword to the 2014 Girls Gone By edition of The Grenville Garrison, Clarissa Cridland discusses three 'Ruritanian' books written in 1939/40 (Enid Blyton's The Secret of Spiggy Holes, Noel Streatfeild's The House in Cornwall and Gwendoline Courtney's The Grenville Garrison) and suggests, "At the beginning of the War, it must have seemed to all three authors that they could not write books about the actual War, but they could write stories which were adventurous (many of their readers must have been longing to 'have a go' at the Nazis) and yet safe, so chose to feature a Ruritanian enemy."

[Rob Houghton]

Sounds interesting! I'll have to give Gwendoline Courtney a try I think! More books to buy!!

[Kate Mary]

I'm reading Stepmother by Gwendoline Courtney in a lovely Girls Gone By edition and it is brilliant and quite funny. I also have this book retitled Elizabeth of the Garret Theatre in a Children's Press edition, I'm not cross-checking the texts but I have flicked through the CP version and noticed a very odd change. Elizabeth goes to see a film of a Shakespeare play, in the GGB version it is Hamlet in the CP Coriolanus, this necessitates some other changes to the text, e.g. references to Coriolanus' Rome instead of Hamlet's Elsinore and Volumnia in place of Ophelia. It is possible that Gwendoline Courtney herself made the changes when the new edition was published but why bother?

I've read my way through all of Gwendoline Courtney's books now and unless Girls Gone By find another story not published in book form I'll have to go back to the beginning and read Torley Grange again.

[Anita Bensoussane]

An interesting alteration, Kate. Maybe Gwendoline Courtney had thoroughly enjoyed Coriolanus (either the play or a film version) since she first wrote the book, so she decided to promote that instead of the better-known Hamlet?

[Kate Mary]

You could be right Anita, also there was a film version of Hamlet starring Laurence Olivier that came out in 1948, the same year that Stepmother was first published. I think the alteration must have been made by Gwendoline Courtney.