Girls Gone By, Fidra Books, Bettany Press

[sixret]

Publishers that reprint out-of-print and scarce vintage children books.

Do you have their titles?

Do you collect their books?

Do the books last longer (the material used to produce the books)?

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've bought quite a few books from Girls Gone By, though not recently. They're good quality paperbacks with the original text and illustrations, and each book has an introduction containing information about the author and about different editions. I bought mainly Malcolm Saville, Gwendoline Courtney and Antonia Forest.

[Kate Mary]

I have a sizable collection of Girls Gone By books, 68 at the moment including Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine series, all of Gwendoline Courtney's books and everything they have published by Mabel Esther Allan, a favourite writer of mine. I have just one Fidra title and one each published by Books To Treasure and Greyladies. They are all good quality paperbacks but be aware that Girls Gone By do very short print runs, if you see something you fancy it's best to buy it at once. I sometimes buy them from a dealer, http://www.badgerbooks.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; they usually have some mint GGB titles at bargain prices, sometimes as little as four or five pounds.

[timv]

I have quite a few Girls Gone By books, mostly editions of ones which I'd owned in paperback years ago but have fallen to pieces or ones I'd read at school - mostly Malcolm Saville, Monica Edwards, Geoffrey Trease, and Antonia Forest. Also a few books which I never read as a child, mostly less well known ones by Saville and Forest and some of the more important Chalet School ones , plus Elfrida Vipont (family stories of the 1950s-70s) and Margaret Biggs (school stories of the 1950s-60s, plus now a couple of new ones in the same series) as I'd only read a couple by either of them and had never come across any other of their books. The GGBP ones, which I get either direct or in the cases of out of print ones from dealers, are much stronger than the old Armada editions and should last longer.

Fidra publish less in number, but choose some authors whose originals are harder to find; original HB or early paperback Edwards, Saville and Brent Dyer Chalet books crop up on the market on and off . I've got a Fidra replacement for Elinor Lyon's 'House in Hiding' which I originally read many years ago, plus some Mabel Esther Allan school stories. I also have some MEA books from Girls Gone By; like the prolific 1930s-50s family and school serial writer Elsie J 'Oxenham' (real name Dunkerley) of the 'Abbey' series, MEA seems to have published with quite a number of different publishers so her books are scattered across different copyright holders and are difficult to find. As Enid became best known for the Famous Five and other longer series but some of her best work is in individual books, MEA was best known as a ballet story writer but some of her early school books are probably more original - and some are quite similar to Enid's, eg 'Naughtiest Girl' type stories at ultra-liberal schools run by a pupils' council. And some set in the Hebrides, with Enid-style mysteries attached.