L.T. Meade was the most prolific writer of girls' books in the nineteenth century. She established the girls' school story with
A World of Girls (1886), but only 30 of the approximately 280 books she authored during her forty-year writing career are school stories. Meade wrote in a wide variety of other genres for both juvenile and adult audiences, including "street arab" tales, historical adventure stories, fantasies, domestic stories, robinsonnades (island survival tales, a genre established by Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe, 1719), nursing stories, detective tales, medical mystery novels, and crime stories. Between 1887 and 1893 she also edited the girls' magazine
Atalanta. - Mavis Reimer,
British Children's Writers, 1880-1914. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994.
more