Merry Again by Clare Mallory.1st edition (1947)

Merry Again by Clare Mallory. Publisher: Oxford University Press: 1947. First Edition.

Good hardback, some fading, creasing and rubbing to blue cloth boards. presentation plate affixed to ffep. Bookseller's label inside front board. Page tanned with scattered foxing.

The second of the three books: Merry Begins, Merry Again, and Merry Marches On; about a girl named Merry living in a New Zealand boarding school. Unusual New Zealand setting and the range of characters is important feature of this book. Mallory doesn't just choose one school class and focus on them, although of course she does spotlight Merry and her friends, she includes girls from all over the school in her narrative, making it feel broader and more inclusive. Clare Mallory is the pen name under which Winifred Constance McQuilkan Hall (25 September 1913 20 April 1991) wrote ten children's books published between 1947 and 1951. Clare Mallory is primarily remembered as a superior exponent of the girls' school story. Prior to her marriage she was headmistress of a day and boarding school in Dunedin, New Zealand and in her short autobiography published in Hugh Anderson's The Singing Roads (Wentworth Press, 1965) she describes her first books as coming from stories she made up to entertain her students while they prepared food parcels for Britain. Clare Mallory was born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1913. She attended Southland Girls' High School where she was dux, University of Otago in Dunedin where she studied English and Latin, graduating with an M.A., and Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a First in English language. She returned to New Zealand to teach and was appointed Headmistress of Columba College, Dunedin in 1942.