My grandmother wrote for girls' comics in the 1950s-60s. Trying to find her work!

[Adam Eterno]

Another recent suggestion:

School Friend's companion title Girls' Crystal could be worth investigating.

[samuelvictor]

David Roach has come back with the possibilities of Enid Boynton, G E Fearn (or C E Fearn), E Currie, A Player, A E Dean or possibly K Jones?

Thank you very much to David and yourself for passing his on. I've just spoken to my father on the phone about this, and though none of those names instantly jump out, all are possibilities. My grandfather's name was Alan, so the "A E" could be "Alan and Enid", and Dean could refer to beign the dean of a school, or also the Forest of Dean. He also thought it was possible they smoked Player's cigarettes at the time. Of course Jones is teh right surname, not sure what the K could have stood for, and G/C E Fearne, whilst not ringing any bells does not sound like a "definite no" either.

If possible, could David let me know which publications each of those people wrote for, and for what years, and if they were definitely writing stories about a girls' boarding school? I appreciate not all of that information may be available, but anything is useful!

One thing that my dad did say theat he remembered was that as a young child, they got Robin - aparantly this was a unisex comic aimed at slightly younger children? So its possible the girls school stories would have been published here, or at least this may be where my grandmother found the address to write to or saw the request for writers? Which would have course lead towards "Girl" comic as the female comic for the older kids from the same publisher. My dad said he remembered that his parents could be quite conservative in their taste for the quality/politics of different companies in his younger days (for example refusing to watch ITV for years because of the adverts and percieved less educational/respectable content!) but remembered that his mother approved of Robin, Eagle, Swift and Girl as comics they could read. Not that I feel that it rules out other comics, but it could mean that "Robin" and "Girl" are both publications that warrant further looking into. Both are from Hulton, and the fact they were bought by Fleetway in 1961 would tally with the suspicion that in the early 60s the comic she wrote for was editorially revamped, leading to her deciding to no longer write there. My aunt described this change as them wanting her to add more romance elements, my dad used the word "racier" to describe the changes she was asked to make!

He's written down the names to run by my Aunt as well to see if any of them ring a bell with her, but she's currently away travelling over Christmas and not back until the 29th.

Thanks again for the help so far!

[samuelvictor]

Another recent suggestion:

School Friend's companion title Girls' Crystal could be worth investigating.

Thank you! Yes Girls' Crystal is definitely a very strong candidate I'd earmarked as a good lead to look into, as it seems to have had these kinds of written stories during that time period.

[samuelvictor]

Nobody has mentioned Princess comic, but from my memory I cannot remember any girls boarding school stories in them. DC Thomson didn't do text stories in Bunty or Judy did they?

Thank you for the input Steve. Yes I'd noted down Princess as one that I saw that may have had text stories, but I haven't looked through any archives. If you don't remember stories about boarding schools, I'll bump it further down the list as less likely, thank you!

Yes you are right that it seems that the main D C Thompson girls comics had less (or no?) text stories from what little research I've done so far.

[jim244]

Nobody has mentioned Princess comic, but from my memory I cannot remember any girls boarding school stories in them. DC Thomson didn't do text stories in Bunty or Judy did they?

Judy did indeed do many text stories Steve.

Judy Complete Text Stories

Judy had a number of complete short stories, in the 1970s in particular there was a lot of text stories. Some text stories include:

A White Mouse Tale

Jenny is not fond of mice, and neither is her cat! She is fond of her next door neighbour Paul who happens to have pet mice.

white mouse tale



“Call Me Brad”

Sally and Ruth both get new boyfriends at the same time Brad and Gary. Suspiciously They never meet each others boyfriends, then Ruth begins to suspect something is up and when she finds out Gary’s full name is Gary William Bradford she figures out they are dating the same guy.

List of Stories
Lucky-Locks – Judy: #1
The Quest of the Lonely Piper – Judy: #2
Her Name at the Top – Judy: #3
The Silver Dancer – Judy: #78
A Nose for News – Judy: #191
The Forbidden Beach – Judy: #198
The Girl Who Talks to Horses – Judy: #203
Beggars Can’t be Choosers – Judy: #733
Way Out for Jody – Judy: #734
Sister of the Bride – Judy: #735
The Square Next Door – Judy: #740
Supper with a Stranger – Judy: #741
Friends and Neighbours – Judy: #742
A Secret Sadness – Judy: #743
A Fool to Dream – Judy: #744
Unwelcome Guest – Judy: #745
The House of Hate – Judy: #746
A Matter of Debate – Judy: #747
Accidental Meeting – Judy: #748
The Face at te Window – Judy: #749
The River Walk – Judy: #750
It’s No Fun being a Comic! – Judy: #751
Day of Decisions – Judy: #752
Somebody for Everybody – Judy: #753
Hard Luck, Pat! – Judy: #754
Jam Tarts for Tea – Judy: #755
The Blue Dress – Judy: #756
Camp Horrible – Judy: #757
Golden Girl – Judy: #758
One of the Family – Judy: #759
The Village Green Gang – Judy: #760
Sweet Dreams – Judy: #761
Saturday Blues – Judy: #762
The Boy on the Gate – Judy: #763
No Time to be Shy – Judy: #764
Lucky Ladybird – Judy: #765
Girls are as Good – Judy: #766
The Fraud – Judy: #768
Dear Mr Editor… – Judy: #769
Sounds in the Night – Judy: #770
The Brass Rubbing – Judy: #771
Hallowe’en Hop – Judy: #773
One Good Turn – Judy: #774
The Anniversary – Judy: #775
I Couldn’t Hurt You, Gran! – Judy: #777
The Autograph Book – Judy: #779
Who’s a Pretty Bird – Judy: #780
The Spirit of Christmas – Judy: #781
Cold Comfort – Judy: #782
Second-Hand Dog – Judy: #783
The Middle One – Judy: #784
The Present – Judy: #787
When Friends Fall Out – Judy: #787
Chips – Judy: #788
Swimming is for Ducks – Judy: #789
Jenny – Judy: #792
Call Me Charley – Judy: #795
Happy Holiday – Judy: #796
Just Fisin’ – Judy: #797
Paper Doll – Judy: #798
Rag Time – Judy: #801
Date with a Diary – Judy: #802
With Some Help From My Friend – Judy: #806
Tearaway Sam – Judy: #807
The Most Marvellous Hobby – Judy: #815
One- Track Mind – Judy: #838
Tally and Spike – Judy: #843
Home, Sweet Home – Judy: #846
I Hate Horses! – Judy: #851
New Look Lucy – Judy: #854
The Birthday Party – Judy: #878
Lost and Found – Judy: #879
Second Fiddle – Judy: #881
I Quite Like Cows! – Judy: #914
Call Me Brad – Judy: #982
A White Mouse Tale – Judy: #987
I’ll Never Call her ‘Mum’! – Judy: #1013
My Dream Holiday – Judy: #1015
Happy Homecoming – Judy: #1019
Operation Terry – Judy: #1022

[samuelvictor]

Nobody has mentioned Princess comic, but from my memory I cannot remember any girls boarding school stories in them. DC Thomson didn't do text stories in Bunty or Judy did they?

Judy did indeed do many text stories Steve.

Judy Complete Text Stories

Oh, that's really cool to know, thank you Jim! I don't suppose you have text summaries for all of the stories, or know where I could find them? We're 99% sure that my grandmother only wrote stories specificially about girls in a boarding/private school. Its such a rabbit hole to go down with the huge amount of girl's comics that were around in those years!

[jim244]

Nobody has mentioned Princess comic, but from my memory I cannot remember any girls boarding school stories in them. DC Thomson didn't do text stories in Bunty or Judy did they?

Judy did indeed do many text stories Steve.

Judy Complete Text Stories

Oh, that's really cool to know, thank you Jim! I don't suppose you have text summaries for all of the stories, or know where I could find them? We're 99% sure that my grandmother only wrote stories specificially about girls in a boarding/private school. Its such a rabbit hole to go down with the huge amount of girl's comics that were around in those years!

Hi Sam.
To be honest with you,as Judy was published between 1960 -1991,it is probably not the answer that you are looking for,just going with your thoughts of 1950 - 1960.
Question (and apologies if you have already stated the answer):
Was your Grandmother a freelancer or on staff for one book?
My point being simply that many writers would have submitted work to many different publications unless they were employed directly by a certain publication.

[jim244]

Also,as far as I am aware,the majority of writers of girls' UK comics were men.
Other than Fiona Turner (Marion Turner) it really was a mans' game.
So I do wonder if perhaps there is some confusion in the information that you have received.

[samuelvictor]

Hi Sam.
To be honest with you,as Judy was published between 1960 -1991,it is probably not the answer that you are looking for,just going with your thoughts of 1950 - 1960.
Question (and apologies if you have already stated the answer):
Was your Grandmother a freelancer or on staff for one book?
My point being simply that many writers would have submitted work to many different publications unless they were employed directly by a certain publication.

Thanks for the reply. We're not sure of the exact dates, but definitely no later than 1963, as can be deducted by the life changes that were happening in their family at the time. The earliest it would have been is 1957, but that doesn't mean that it definitely was as early as that. So we can't rule out Judy, though it wouldn't be top of my list to check unless anyone knows of specific stories that fit the genre/setting described.

Details are skant and fuzzy because the only people left alive who know about this are all in their 70s, and this happened when they were children, so we only know through their vague recall of my grandmother telling them about it many years ago. All 3 of them remember the same basic details though. We can place it as likely in tht time period because of the life/work situations at the time.

We are pretty certain that the stories that she wrote were all about the same or very similar group of girls in the same school, so would have been almost certainly all published in the same comic book (or I suppose one of the related spin offs like the "girls library" style mini books or annuals).

I am also certain that she would have just been writing these at her home in Upton and posting them to the publisher, presumably as a semi-regular freelancer. My aunt mentioned that the pay for the stories was very welcome as a bonus but not enough to replace a full wage and retire my grandfather or anything like that. It wasn't full time employment with a contract, and they could (and eventually did) turn down the work, eventually requesting that she start writing more racy/romantic stories, which she wasn't interested in doing.

We know it was a series of multiple stories and this went on for "a while" before the change was requested and she decided to stop, though sadly we have no concept of whether that means 5 stories or 50!

I know my own mum had a very similar arrangement with a womans magazine where she used to write a monthly story for them for a very long period of time throughout my childhood in the 80s and early 90s, I think she was only paid about £50 per story, and it was all done from home just typing them and posting them in, and they'd print almost all of them, but occasionally reject one or request ones on a specific topic. There was no contract, she was just a prefered freelancer who was already on the books. I strongly imagine that the situation with my grandmother would have been very similar.

[samuelvictor]

Also,as far as I am aware,the majority of writers of girls' UK comics were men.
Other than Fiona Turner (Marion Turner) it really was a mans' game.
So I do wonder if perhaps there is some confusion in the information that you have received.

Yes I've been noticing this as well in my research, often men writing under psuedonyms.

However, this is a story that my father, aunt, and mother have all recounted separately and remember talking to my grandmother about it, and also my aunt especially remembers being young and the extra money coming in and being useful paying for things, especially when my grandfather got sick or needed time off.

The thing is, my grandmother was absolutely not the type to make up a tall tale about her past (I know you weren't suggesting this) especially because she didn't really like to boast or agrandise any of her achievements and always deflect and say she didn't like to think about the past and concentrate on the future. Her retelling of the fact she did this was only once and briefly to each person when talking about how she coped raising my dad and aunt through this particular period of their life, which has some ups and downs in health, fortune, and eventually moving house etc.

As I said, my mother had this kind of arrangement in the 80s for a "proper" women's magazine, so it definitely did happen back then... of course, the 1950s and 60s is a different kettle of fish but it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that the magazines/comics would cheaply buy stories from freelancers to save money and easily pad pages with minimum effort from internal staff.

Indeed, I myself have written for several magazines, done rewrites on film and television scripts, videogames, "punched up" the writing of other people, and ghost written song lyrics for major artists... none of which has been credited to me. Its not unusual nowadays for established writers under salary to unofficially buy the services of independents to ease their workload under an informal agreement, I wonder if perhaps this was the case with my grandmother's work being sold to another writer to pass as their own? If this is the case we may never be able to trace it... though I'd still be interested in any long running series of boarding school stories as if this is an uncommon thing, as that may be the smoking gun and the only lead we have.

When pushed about the stories by my mum (a professional writer) my grandmother just minimised it and said they were nowhere near as good as my mum's work, and just silly stories for kids that anyone could have written, and were mostly based on the stories of real boarding schools she'd heard from the young women in her nursing college when she was training to be a nurse oin the war and recounting stereotypes of how they'd talk and act (plum in mouth, "jolly hockeysticks" type girls). Still. Had I known about this when she was still alive I would have pushed her further as I'd love to know more and I'm sure I'd enjoy them and I'm proud of her achievements, even if she just saw them as a temporary means to an end.

[jim244]

Also,as far as I am aware,the majority of writers of girls' UK comics were men.
Other than Fiona Turner (Marion Turner) it really was a mans' game.
So I do wonder if perhaps there is some confusion in the information that you have received.

Yes I've been noticing this as well in my research, often men writing under psuedonyms.

However, this is a story that my father, aunt, and mother have all recounted separately and remember talking to my grandmother about it, and also my aunt especially remembers being young and the extra money coming in and being useful paying for things, especially when my grandfather got sick or needed time off.

The thing is, my grandmother was absolutely not the type to make up a tall tale about her past (I know you weren't suggesting this) especially because she didn't really like to boast or agrandise any of her achievements and always deflect and say she didn't like to think about the past and concentrate on the future. Her retelling of the fact she did this was only once and briefly to each person when talking about how she coped raising my dad and aunt through this particular period of their life, which has some ups and downs in health, fortune, and eventually moving house etc.

As I said, my mother had this kind of arrangement in the 80s for a "proper" women's magazine, so it definitely did happen back then... of course, the 1950s and 60s is a different kettle of fish but it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that the magazines/comics would cheaply buy stories from freelancers to save money and easily pad pages with minimum effort from internal staff.

Indeed, I myself have written for several magazines, done rewrites on film and television scripts, videogames, "punched up" the writing of other people, and ghost written song lyrics for major artists... none of which has been credited to me. Its not unusual nowadays for established writers under salary to unofficially buy the services of independents to ease their workload under an informal agreement, I wonder if perhaps this was the case with my grandmother's work being sold to another writer to pass as their own? If this is the case we may never be able to trace it... though I'd still be interested in any long running series of boarding school stories as if this is an uncommon thing, as that may be the smoking gun and the only lead we have.

When pushed about the stories by my mum (a professional writer) my grandmother just minimised it and said they were nowhere near as good as my mum's work, and just silly stories for kids that anyone could have written, and were mostly based on the stories of real boarding schools she'd heard from the young women in her nursing college when she was training to be a nurse oin the war and recounting stereotypes of how they'd talk and act (plum in mouth, "jolly hockeysticks" type girls). Still. Had I known about this when she was still alive I would have pushed her further as I'd love to know more and I'm sure I'd enjoy them and I'm proud of her achievements, even if she just saw them as a temporary means to an end.

Hi.
Well it is indeed very fascinating and I understand must be frustrating for yourself.
HOWEVER,as you yourself state above,the freelancer angle is the most likely scenario.
Therefore,you are not looking for a particular comic.
You are looking for stories published in many different publications under different pseudonyms.
An impossible question for anyone to answer.
I'm sorry I couldn't be of any more help.

[samuelvictor]

Hi.
Well it is indeed very fascinating and I understand must be frustrating for yourself.
HOWEVER,as you yourself state above,the freelancer angle is the most likely scenario.
Therefore,you are not looking for a particular comic.
You are looking for stories published in many different publications under different pseudonyms.
An impossible question for anyone to answer.
I'm sorry I couldn't be of any more help.

No worries! Thanks, I really do appreciate your thoughts on this.

That's certainly a possibility, yes.

The thing is though, she didn't just writer freelance stories about many different things and characters and scenrios. We're pretty sure the multiple stories were not just in the same genre, but with the same characters and school. Logically this tells me its most likely that the stories were all in the same publication.

From looking through archives of downloads of these kinds of comics it seems common to have recurring chracters and settings that rnu for a few weeks or months - for example when I initially thought that Enid Boynton was a possible candidate, I noted that "she" wrote stories about "Jo of Hawthorn Stables" in at least 20 of the issues of "School Friend" that I flicked through. From the sounds of it, it would have been a similar situation with my grandmother writing a series of stories about a specific set of girls and teachers in a specific school, with each week having a short story about something that happened there. This is why I feel that if we can find such a series of stories in a comic from the period, even without the name, this may be the smoking gun to investigate further.

[stevezodiac]

Phoenix is our expert on girls' comics but he hasn't posted on here for a while. Is anybody in contact with him?

[Adam Eterno]

Two more experts have come back to me. Phil Ruston says: I'd have said that School Friend, Girls' Crystal, Girl (and maybe Bunty) are the only really likely candidates since any other girls' titles that were launched in the 1950s tended to have a Romance theme from the beginning. Also, the publishers of the first three comics underwent major editorial changes in late 1959 which impacted on their content and creative personel significantly.

[Adam Eterno]

Peter Hansen says: I have the ledgers of work by women and men from the 30’s to the mid sixties! Only problem is that I am in Canada and my ledgers are in the UK!! I’ve asked him when he’s due back next and what comics the ledgers cover. Knowing Peter, it will be them all!