The Schoolgirls' Own Annual.

In 1922 the Amalgamated Press decided to publish a new girls annual in response to the success of the School Friend and more lately the Schoolgirls' Own weekly papers and also apparently many requests to them to publish an annual. Like the boys' Holiday Annual it was a full bodied collection of school and adventure stories but for girls, written by the usual array of AP male staff masquerading as women authors - Renee Frazer, Joan Vincent, Gertrude Nelson, Mildred Gordon etc. Cliff House stories written by "Hilda Richards" took the lead and appeared for a few years but then starred in its own Annual from 1927, logically called the School Friend, whereas the Morcove tales written by "Marjorie Stanton" appeared every year until bowing out in the 1939 annual. The AP records on authorship were incomplete when Lofts and Adley were listing the titles but it's reasonable to assume that Horace Phillips wrote all the Morcove stories and Reg Kirkham or L. E. Ransome wrote of Cliff House. The Schoolgirls' Own Annual was published in August/September with Christmas sales in mind and throughout the 1920's it had a cover illustration by Alfred Bestall, later The Rupert Artist, and the covers continued to be colourful and eye-catching throughout the '30's to the end. In 1943 the last Schoolgirls' Own annual appeared - by then the AP had had to consolidate all the girls stories into one story paper/annual, the Girls' Crystal, which with the School Friend annual marched on for many years to come.

In an article for the 1979 Collectors' Digest Annual Tommy Keen explains why Cliff House and Morcove were his favourite school stories. You can read the article here.

Neal Beatty has compiled a list of contents for the Schoolgirls' Own Annual and has kindly shared it - you can find it here. He has also compiled a list of characters that featured in the Morcove saga - you can find it here.

The introduction to the Annual,scans and the following list of Morcove and Cliff House stories that featured in the Schoolgirls' Own Annual were kindly supplied by Gary Panczyszyn.