About Folly

Do you enjoy or collect girls’ books? Then this website is for you.

If you used to subscribe to Folly, you’ll know all about it. If not, read the introduction below.

Folly was a magazine which ran for 23 years. It was founded in 1990 by Sue Sims and Belinda Copson, who loved children’s books, and especially girls’ school stories; Belinda retired some years back, but Sue continued editing the magazine with the help of Daphne Faux-Larkman, the Treasurer, and Jan Owen, who managed the address list.

Folly was never a fanzine, though fans read it. It wasn’t a scholarly journal, though it published plenty of original research. It wasn’t simply a frivolous bit of froth, though any issue which didn’t make readers laugh would have been a failure. We tried to provide a mixture of all these things three times a year – though regularity was never a feature of Folly, alas.

Folly always specialised in articles about school story writers, from Elinor M. Brent-Dyer to Antonia Forest and from Elsie Jeanette Oxenham to Evelyn Smith, but branched out long ago into any collectible children’s books. We had short stories, verse, lots of articles on collecting, and plenty of silly pictures and competitions. Consult the Index to see what’s available. Follow the links to see samples from past issues; more articles will be put online gradually. Earlier back issues are now, unfortunately, mostly out of print, but from no. 28 onwards, plus Christmas Specials 2 - 5, they are available and can be ordered here. If there’s a particular author you’re interested in, please contact Sue before ordering, as many Index entries are only passing references, and it wouldn’t be worth ordering a whole issue for a single line of print.

We’re intending to develop the website so that new material can be posted online by anyone who wishes to submit an article, quiz, review, etc. We’d also like to establish a blog and/or forum, and link to Facebook and Twitter (but don’t try that yet!). If you have any more ideas, or want to respond to the website so far, contact Sue. She may even manage to get back to you within the year…

Note: Please ignore the Log In tab at the right of the menu bar: at present it's only there for maintenance purposes, and nothing will happen if you click on it. Currently, all the material on the site is available to anyone without the necessity to register or log in.