Triply excluded from the literary canon—for being classified as children's literature, for being classified within children's literature as a school story, and for being, moreover, a school story about girls—Evelyn Sharp's The Making of a Schoolgirl (1897) has too long languished in obscurity. This gem of a novel sparkles with ironic wit, offers keen insights into relationships with family and friends, and undermines patriarchal conventions while paradoxically finding sustenance in them. Beverly Lyon Clark's introduction to this new edition of the novel discusses how Sharp—later a leader in the suffrage movement—explores the conflicting pulls of school and family and probes the sexual politics of what it meant to grow up female in late-Victorian England. Becky, the heroine of the novel, learns about girls' schools from her brother Jack, who, while castigating girls for putting lessons before larks, at the same time criticizes them for not knowing the meaning of hard work. Sharp's irony enables her to endorse Becky's affection for Jack even as she subverts the patriarchal values he propounds. This masterpiece remains today as compelling for adults as for children.
Author
Born in 1869, in London, Evelyn Sharp was the daughter of slate merchant James Sharp, and the sister of Cecil Sharp, who would later gain fame as a folksong collector, and leader of the folkdance revival. She was educated at Strathallan House, and - despite passing the Cambridge Higher Local Examination in history - at a finishing school in Paris. Against the wishes of her family, Sharp moved to London in 1894, where she became a journalist and an author, publishing a number of books for both children and adults. A member of the Women's Industrial Council and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, as well as the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Sharp was a prominent activist in the Women's Suffrage movement, arrested twice, and once going on hunger strike. She edited the Votes for Women suffrage journal, and also had strong pacifist views. Sharp married her long-time friend and lover, Henry Nevinson, in 1933, and continued to work for the social causes in which she believed. She died in 1955.
