Janie Steps In

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was an English writer of children's literature who wrote more than one hundred books during her lifetime, the most famous being the Chalet School series. Brent-Dyer's first book, Gerry Goes to School, was published in 1922 and became the first of the La Rochelle series. She was inspired to start the Chalet School series after holidaying in the Austrian Tyrol at Pertisau-am-Achensee. The first book in the series, The School at the Chalet, was published in 1923. Although she was raised as an Anglican, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930. In 1933, Brent-Dyer and her mother moved to Hereford, where Brent-Dyer was employed as a governess in Peterchurch. In 1938, she opened her own school, the Margaret Roper School, which closed in 1948. She then dedicated all of her time to writing. Brent-Dyer's mother died in 1957. In 1964, her long-time friend Phyllis Matthewman persuaded her leave the unmanageably large Victorian villa at which she had previously run her school in order to live with Phyllis and her literary agent husband, Sydney. After first living together as tenants in half of a house called Albury Edge, at Redhill, Surrey, they bought a house together, Gryphons, also at Redhill, in 1965. Phyllis's aunt, who knew the Dyer family, had introduced them to one another in childhood. Sydney Matthewman served as Brent-Dyer's agent.