38 Facts About Angela Brazil

Angela Brazil was one of the first British writers of "modern schoolgirls' stories", written from the characters' point of view and intended primarily as entertainment rather than moral instruction.

Angela Brazil's books were commercially successful, widely read by pre-adolescent girls, and influenced them.

Angela Brazil presented a young female point of view which was active, aware of current issues and independent-minded; she recognised adolescence as a time of transition, and accepted girls as having common interests and concerns which could be shared and acted upon.

Angela Brazil was born on 30 November 1868, at her home, 1 West Cliff, Preston, Lancashire.

Angela Brazil was the youngest child of Clarence Brazil, a mill manager, and Angelica McKinnel, the daughter of the owner of a shipping line in Rio de Janeiro, who had a Spanish mother.

Angela Brazil was the youngest of four siblings including sister Amy, and two brothers, Clarence and Walter.

Angela Brazil was primarily influenced by her mother, Angelica, who had suffered during her Victorian English schooling, and was determined to bring up her children in a liberated, creative and nurturing manner, encouraging them to be interested in literature, music and botany, a departure from the typical distant attitude towards children adopted by parents in the Victorian era.

Angela Brazil was treated with great affection by her sister Amy from an early age, and Amy effected an immense, perhaps dominating influence on Angela Brazil throughout her life.

Angela Brazil commenced her education at age four at Miss Knowle's Select Ladies School in Preston, but lasted only a half-day.

Angela Brazil was briefly at Manchester Secondary School and finally at Ellerslie, a fairly exclusive girls' school in Malvern, where she boarded in her later adolescence.

Angela Brazil began writing seriously for children in her 30s.

Angela Brazil spent most of her time with her mother until her death, and thereafter with her elder sister Amy, and brother Walter.

Angela Brazil had only two major friendships outside the family circle, one of which started in her school days and the other in her 30s.

Angela Brazil moved to 1 The Quadrant, Coventry in 1911, with her brother and they were joined by her sister Amy upon their mother's death in 1915.

Angela Brazil was well known in Coventry high society as a hostess and threw parties for adults, with a greater number of female guests, at which children's food and games were featured.

Angela Brazil had no children of her own but hosted many parties for children.

Angela Brazil read widely and collected early children's fiction; her collection is in Coventry library.

Angela Brazil took great interest in local history and antiquities, and involved herself in charity work.

Angela Brazil was quite late in taking up writing, developing a strong interest in Welsh mythology, and at first wrote a few magazine articles on mythology and nature - due most likely to spending holidays in an ancient cottage called Ffynnon Bedr in Llanbedr y Cennin, North Wales.

Angela Brazil's first publication was a book of four children's plays entitled The Mischievous Brownie.

Angela Brazil began work on her first full-length tale for children, The Fortunes of Philippa, in the same year, after her father's death.

Angela Brazil's first published novel was A Terrible Tomboy, but this was not strictly a school story.

The story was autobiographical, with Angela Brazil represented as the principal character Peggy, and her friend Leila Langdale appearing as Lilian.

The novel was based on her mother, Angelica Angela Brazil, who had grown up in Rio de Janeiro and attended an English boarding school at the age of 10, finding the English culture, school life and climate confronting.

The Fortunes of Philippa was an instant success, and Angela Brazil soon received commissions to produce similar work.

Angela Brazil is seen as the first writer of girls' school story fiction who wrote stories from the point of view of the pupils and whose stories were mostly intended to entertain readers, rather than instruct them on moral principles.

Angela Brazil intended to write stories that were fun and included characters who were ordinary people.

Angela Brazil wrote for girls gaining a greater level of freedom in the early 20th century and intended to capture their point of view.

Unlike many of her successors, Angela Brazil never wrote a series of books set in a particular school, although there are three pairs of books among her 46 full-length school stories: A Fortunate Term and Monitress Merle; At School with Rachel and St Catherine's College; and The Little Green School and Jean's Golden Term.

Angela Brazil's schools usually have between 20 and 50 pupils and so are able to create a community which is an extended family, but of sufficient size to function as a kind of micro state, with its own traditions and rules.

Angela Brazil did not invent the story of boarding school life, although she was a major influence over its transformation.

Angela Brazil's fiction presented energetic characters who openly challenged authority, were cheeky, perpetrated pranks, and lived in a world which celebrated their youth and in which adults and their concerns were sidelined.

Angela Brazil's stories written before 1914, the beginning of the First World War, lean more towards issues of character that were typical in Victorian fiction for girls.

Angela Brazil is frequently held to be largely responsible for establishing the girls' school story genre, which exerted a major effect on the reading practices of girls for decades after she began publishing her novels, although this belief has been challenged.

JK Rowling's Harry Potter series draws upon many elements of English public school education fiction that Angela Brazil's work helped to establish.

However, when Angela Brazil first wrote schoolgirl tales she was not simply repeating established norms in fiction for young women, and her approach was innovative and actually establishing new ideas about girls' lives, which were simplified and turned into stock motifs by later writers.

Angela Brazil seemed particularly attached to the name Lesbia, which was given to several important characters: Lesbia Ferrars in Loyal to the School, for instance, and Lesbia Carrington in For the School Colours.

Angela Brazil was part of a field studies group in Wales with her sister, and recorded what she saw on walks around Coventry.