Angela Brazil, (pronounced "brazzle"), (November 30, 1868 - March 13, 1947), was the first of the British writers of "modern" School Girls' Stories genre - written from the characters' point of view. The equivalent in respect of boys' stories was Charles Hamilton (1876-1961), (pen name Frank Richards). This twentieth century genre aimed to write entertaining rather than merely instructional stories. L.T. Meade (1854-1914) was a hugely prolific author of School Girls' Stories in the second half of the nineteenth century, but in the much more overtly moralizing, instructional, style.
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Along with her sister Amy, Angel then studied at Heatherley Art School in London.
Angela was born in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the youngest of a middle-class Mill Manager’s family, which moved according her father’s work, around the Manchester Mill towns of Lancashire.
After her father’s death, in 1899, the family moved home to the Conwy valley, and she travelled with her mother in Europe. She moved to 1 The Quadrant, Coventry in 1911, with a brother, and they were joined by her sister Amy - upon their mother's death in 1915. Angela never married.
She was quite late in taking up writing, developing a strong interest in Welsh mythology, and at first wrote a few magazine articles on mythology and nature – due most likely to spending holidays in a cottage in Wales. It was possibly thanks to her sister Amy that she finally began work on a novel at the age of 35.
Her first book to be published was A terrible tomboy (1905), but this was not strictly a school story. Her long sequence of school stories did not commence until her second book The fortunes of Phillipa (1906), and exceptionally with respect to many of her contemporaries writing in this vein, she did not write any books in a series - each stood on its own with different characters every time. These were considered to deal accurately and sympathetically with the highs and lows in the lives of middle-class schoolgirls, including the tangle of emotional friendships. The realism is particularly shown in her frequent use of slang expressions - a factor leading to some teachers of the time to ban her books. In addition to her books, she also contributed a large number of school stories to children's annuals and the Girl's Own Paper.