Dorita Fairlie Bruce (20 May 1885 – 21 September 1970) was a Scottish children's author who wrote the popular Dimsie series of books published between 1921 and 1941.
[1][note 1] Bruce's early childhood was spent in Scotland, first at Blanefield among the Campsie Hills, Stirling, an area that was to feature in many of her early stories,[5] and then at Blairgowrie, Perthshire, where her brother Alan Cathcart Fairlie Bruce (2 March 1894 – 10 October 1927)[6][note 3] her only sibling, was born.
In 1895 her father got the contract to build the Staines Reservoirs, next to what is now Heathrow Airport and the family moved south to Ealing in west London.
[1] Many of her holidays were spent with relations in Scotland, particularly the Firth of Clyde area around Largs in Ayrshire, which was later to become her particular literary landscape.
[9] Apart from her writing, Bruce seems to have led a life similar to that of many other unmarried middle-class women of her time, devoted to family duties and voluntary work.
She looked after her invalid mother and later her ageing father, and helped to bring up her brother's three children after his early death.
[10] This was a uniformed girls' organisation founded in 1900 by Dr William Francis Somerville and originally associated with the Church of Scotland, but later spread over other parts of Britain and the Empire.
Not until 1949 was she free to move back to Scotland, to the big house she had bought in Upper Skelmorlie in the northern part of Ayrshire.
[5] In this house with its marvellous view of the Firth of Clyde, and named 'Triffeny' after one of her own books, she spent the last 21 years of her life,[1] dying there aged 85 on 21 September 1970.
After leaving school she wrote a great number of poems and short stories in various genres for juvenile periodicals and anthologies from about 1905.
[15] The Colmskirk sequence, a set of nine novels for young adults, widened her scope, dealing with a group of families in the Scottish countryside around Largs from the seventeenth century to the twentieth.
Jane's is situated on the Kentish coast, most likely at St. Margaret's Bay, but the buildings are clearly modelled on Bruce's own old school, Clarence House.
The school stories follow Dimsie (Daphne Isabel Maitland) from 10 year old Junior to popular head girl.
[22]: 30 In the last book, Dimsie Carries on (1941), set during WW2, she is married to Dr Peter Gilmour, has two children and makes medicines from her own herb garden.
[23] The twelfth book listed below, Dimsie Takes Charge, is outside the series and was a collection of all of the short stories featuring Dimsie and the Jane Willard Foundation that had appeared in annuals and story books, published to celebrate the centenary of Bruce's birth.
The five 'Maudsley' books, on the other hand, are set in a day school in a town in southern England, probably based on Farnham in Surrey, where Nancy spends a few years between her two sojourns at St. Bride's.
[5] The six 'Springdale' books are Bruce's most Scottish school stories, set in the little seaside resort 'Redchurch', without a doubt modelled on Largs.
These books follow the little group of friends around Anne Willoughby and Primula Mary Beton through their schooldays, from new juniors to prefects.
[22]: 10 The 'Colmskirk' series is different from her school stories, nine young adult novels about a group of families living in and around Largs ('Colmskirk') and West Kilbride ('Kirkarlie') from the 17th C to post WW2 time.
[5] Largs and the Firth of Clyde Area is the central landscape in Bruce's work, the scene of nearly half her books.
Largs itself is a pleasant seaside resort with a beautiful view of the Firth of Clyde, The Cumbrae Islands, and, in fine weather, the distant peaks of Arran.
This is the 'Redchurch' of the Springdale and St. Bride's books, and the 'Colmskirk' of the Colmskirk novels, both names obviously derived from the parish church, St. Columba's, built in 1892 by red sandstone and quite a landmark with its lofty spire.
"[26] Bruce was one of the Big Four of girls' school fiction, together with Angela Brazil, Elsie Oxenham, and Elinor Brent-Dyer.
[29]: 3 Clare notes that the interest of Bruce's school stories "depends chiefly not on romantic settings or exciting incidents (although both occur) but on the interplay of characters and the resolution of personal dilemmas within the limits of a small, clearly defined community.