Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (6 April 1894 – 20 September 1969) was an English writer of children's literature who wrote more than one hundred books during her lifetime, the most famous being the Chalet School series.

Early life and education

Brent-Dyer was born Gladys Eleanor May Dyer on 6 April 1894 in South Shields. She was the only daughter of Charles Morris Brent Dyer, a surveyor, and Eleanor Watson Rutherford. Her father left the family when she was three years old and her mother remarried in 1913. In 1912, her younger brother Henzell died of meningitis. Brent-Dyer was educated privately at a small school in South Shields until 1912 and shortly afterward trained to teach at City of Leeds Training College. She taught a variety of subjects at both state and private schools and ran a Girl Guide group. In the 1920s, she briefly studied music under Edgar Bainton at the Newcastle Conservatoire.

Career

Brent-Dyer's first book, Gerry Goes to School, was published in 1922 and became the first of the La Rochelle series. She was inspired to start the Chalet School series after holidaying in the Austrian Tyrol at Pertisau-am-Achensee. The first book in the series, The School at the Chalet, was published in 1925. Although she was raised as an Anglican, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930. In 1933, Brent-Dyer and her mother moved to Hereford, where Brent-Dyer was employed as a governess in Peterchurch. In 1938, she opened her own school, the Margaret Roper School, which closed in 1948. She then dedicated all of her time to writing. Brent-Dyer's mother died in 1957. In 1964, her long-time friend Phyllis Matthewman persuaded her to leave the unmanageably large Victorian villa at which she had previously run her school to live with Phyllis and her literary agent husband, Sydney. After first living together as tenants in half of a house called Albury Edge, at Redhill, Surrey, they bought a house together, Gryphons, also at Redhill, in 1965. Phyllis's aunt, who knew the Dyer family, had introduced them to one another in childhood. Sydney Matthewman served as Brent-Dyer's agent. Brent-Dyer died at Redhill in 1969 and her final book was published posthumously the following year.

Chalet School series

(in reading order)

La Rochelle series

Chudleigh Hold series

A loosely connected series of adventure books

Other works