Nancy at St Bride’s by Dorita Fairlie Bruce was first published in 1933, but my copy is in an omnibus edition published in 1937 along with That Boarding-School Girl and The New Girl and Nancy.

Chapter I is headed On A Clyde Steamer. The boat which will take the schoolgirls to the Scottish island location of their school is waiting for them at Greenock Pier. Nancy Caird is a new girl, a junior who has never been to school before. It turns out that she’s a handful and a half with no boundaries or inhibitions. In fact she thinks that rules are there to be broken and she’s always on the look-out to cause mayhem, no matter what the consequences are. A typical Nancy as we have experienced. Each of us had a mother called Nancy.

Christine Maclean has been given the job of looking after Nancy and explaining the rules to her, the job of monitors and such, but Christine’s good friend Sybil who is a bit of an awkward personality herself,  makes matters worse when she appears to be siding with Nancy and doesn’t take matters seriously at all.

This one took a different turn from what I expected it to as it got close to the end, which was a nice surprise really, as there was a bit of a comeuppance for Nancy.  I was slightly disappointed that given the Scottish setting there wasn’t more of a sense of place somehow, but maybe that was me expecting too much. There were quite a few Scots words used within the dialogue though.

I have most of the author’s Dimsie books in original hardback, but I had to buy them online, I was also sent several of the books by a very kind woman who was looking for a good home for her collection.

I was amazed to find this Nancy trilogy in an Oxfam bookshop, at a very reasonable price too, so it’s still possible to find old books like this when you least expect to.

Sadly my copy doesn’t have its nice dust jacket – but you can’t have everything!