Julia Augusta Schwartz (1873–1957)

Read August 2008.

The content is typical of old "girls' school" books--friendships and academic honors and midnight "spreads"--although it avoids the nearly-ubiquitous plagiarism scandal and even makes a meta-reference to the cliche.

However, I rated this book at just two stars because it is unusually disjointed. Almost every chapter is a vignette about different students at the college. Beatrice Leigh appears only occasionally, and the final chapter is about Berta Abbott (although I could hardly tell Bea and Berta and Robbie apart). Characters don't show much personality or development, and conflicts and character flaws are resolved with a single sentence, then dropped for the rest of the book. The book skips along through the four years of college with little transition, and when we are suddenly told that some of the girls are in quarantine with some illness, I wondered if I'd missed a chapter.

Trivia: The college is Schwartz's alma mater, Vassar.

Beatrice Leigh at College @ Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25893

More on Julia Augusta Schwartz:

http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/findingaids/schwartz_julia.html… (altro)