Elinor M. Brent-Dyer: 
a brief biography

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was born as Gladys Eleanor May Dyer in South Shields on 6th April 1894, the only daughter of Eleanor (Nelly) Watson Rutherford and Charles Morris Brent Dyer. Her father had been married before and had a son, Charles Arnold, who was never to live with his father and stepmother.   This caused some friction between Elinor's parents and her father left home when she was three and her younger brother, Henzell, two. Her father eventually went to live with another woman by whom he had a third son, another Charles. Elinor's parents lived in a respectable lower middle class area and the family covered up the departure of her father by saying that her mother had 'lost' her husband.

In 1912, Henzell died of cerebro-spinal fever, another event which was covered up. Friends of Elinor's who knew her after his death were unaware that she had had a brother. Death from illness was, of course, common at this time and Elinor's familiarity with this is reflected in her books, which abound with motherless heroines.

Elinor was educated privately in South Shields and returned there to teach after she had been to the City of Leeds Training College. In the early 1920s she adopted the name Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer. She was interested in the theatre and her first book, Gerry Goes to School, published in 1922 was written for the child actress Hazel Bainbridge - mother of Kate O'Mara. In the mid twenties she also taught at St Helen's Northwood in Middlesex, Moreton House School, Dunstable and in Fareham near Portsmouth. She was a keen musician and a practising Christian, converting to Roman Catholicism in 1930, a major step in those days.

In the early 1920s Elinor spent a holiday in the Austrian Tyrol at Pertisau-am-Achensee - which she was to use so successfully as the first location in the Chalet School series.  (Many of the locations in her books were real places.) In 1933 she moved with her mother and stepfather to Hereford, travelling daily to Peterchurch as a governess. When her stepfather died she started her own school in Hereford, The Margaret Roper, which ran until 1948. Unlike the Chalet School it was not a huge success and probably would not have survived had it not been for the Second World War. From 1948 she devoted all her time to writing. Elinor's mother died in 1957 and in 1964 she moved to Redhill where she died on 20th September 1969.

In 1994 Friends of the Chalet School celebrated the centenary of Elinor Brent-Dyer's birth. Plaques were put up in Pertisau, South Shields and Hereford, and we had a headstone erected on her grave, since there was not one previously. Friends of the Chalet School puts flowers on her grave on the anniversaries of her birth and death and on other special occasions. Photograph by Doreen Litchfield

Further reading:

Behind the Chalet School by Helen McClelland. This is the official biography of EBD and is essential reading for anyone who wishes to know about EBD's life and work.
A World of Girls by Rosemary Auchmuty
These are available from Bettany Press.
   

The Chalet School Revisited by various authors.Out of print.  A World of Women by Rosemary Auchmuty (in print, published by The Women's Press) Elinor M Brent-Dyer's Chalet School. Out of print. (shown right) The Chalet School Companion by Helen McClelland. Out of print.(shown on left)