Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1885–1970) was a British children's author who wrote the popular Dimsie series of books published between 1921 and 1941. Her books were second in popularity only to Angela Brazil's during the 1920s and 1930s.

She was a pioneer in creating series of books which followed a group of girls throughout their schooldays and even beyond. Her Dimsie, Nancy and Springdale series all follow this pattern, which was widely imitated.[1]

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. [2]

Bruce was involved with the Girls' Guildry for over thirty years. She contributed factual articles to the Lamp of the Girls' Guildry magazine and Girls' Guildry plays a role in her Nancy series and gets a mention in her Dimsie series. The Girls' Guildry later merged with similar organisations to become the Girls' Brigade.

(Text entered with the permission of Eva M. Löfgren, The Dorita Fairlie Bruce Homepage)

Dorothy Morris Fairlie Bruce, as was her original name, was born in Palos in Spain on 20 May 1885, as the daughter of Alexander Fairlie Bruce, a civil engineer of Scottish birth, and Katherine (Kate) Elizabeth Fairbairn. But much of her early childhood was spent in Scotland, in Blanefield among the Campsie Hills, Stirling, an area that was to feature in many of her early stories. She also had a younger brother, Alan. In about 1895 the family moved to Ealing, NW London, where Dorita was to live until 1949. At about the same time she went to boarding school at Clarence House in Roehampton, the model for Dimsie's school, the 'Jane Willard Foundation'. 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. Her mother's family lived in West Kilbride, a few miles south of Largs.

Dorita's paternal grandmother, Roberta Cadell, was a daughter of Robert Cadell, Sir Walter Scott's publisher, who is mentioned briefly in her historical novel, A Laverock Lilting. You may read about their genealogy at The Cadells of Grange and Cockenzie.

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