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  • Published: 10 Jan 2015
  • DOI: 10.4324/9781848935228
  • Set ISBN: 9781848935228

Set Contents

A College Girl


When Mrs George de Horne Vaizey’s novel A College Girl was serialized in the Girl’s Own Paper in 1911, the first installment was illustrated by real-life photographs from Newnham College, which the novel’s heroine Darsie attends. When the book was republished in complete form in 1913, the cover featured an attractive drawing of a Newnham student holding up a kettle. Both of these illustrations, as well as the title of the novel, highlight the importance of the college experience to the novel’s plot, despite the fact that only a little less than half of it actually takes place at Newnham. They also showcase A College Girl’s role as a ‘new’ type of women’s university fiction, less muted and careful than earlier works like In Statu Pupillari or The Girls of Merton College, with their disguised names like ‘Castlebridge’ and ‘Hypatia’. Although Vaizey, like Johnson and Meade, was a generation too old to attend Cambridge herself, A College Girl operates confidently within the world of ‘real’ Cambridge, taking it for granted that fictional ‘everygirl’ heroines like Darsie, and the ordinary readers of the Girl’s Own Paper, not only could but should access the delights of Newnham. A College Girl thus moves beyond the Victorian vision of Oxbridge suggested by Johnson and Meade, providing an Edwardian bridge between these older accounts and post-war narratives of women’s university life.

Volume Contents

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    Front Matter
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    Introduction: A College Girl By Anna Bogen
  • A College Girl
    • A College Girl
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        I
        Boys and Girls
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        II
        The Telegraph Station
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        III
        Aunt Maria
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        IV
        A Double Picnic
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        V
        Left Behind!
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        VI
        Dan to the Rescue
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        VII
        Aunt Maria's Choice
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        VIII
        First Days
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        IX
        The Percivals
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        X
        A Treaty
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        XI
        A Dangerous Adventure
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        XII
        Darsie's Suggestion
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        XIII
        The Treasure Hunt
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        XIV
        A Treasure Indeed
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        XV
        A Dream Fulfilled
    • Part II
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        XVI
        After Three Years
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        XVII
        The Auction
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        XVIII
        First Experiences
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        XIX
        The Fancy Ball
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        XX
        Undergraduate Friends
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        XXI
        Mrs. Reeves Makes a Proposal
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        XXII
        Christmas Day
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        XXIII
        The Melodrama
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        XXIV
        Dan and Darsie
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        XXV
        New Year's Eve
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        XXVI
        At the Orchard
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        XXVII
        Disaster
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        XXVIII
        Brighter Days
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        XXIX
        Tripos Week
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        XXX
        Farewell to Newnham
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    Back Matter