Then they spend a month or so in Nice with Ned, the aforementioned Naval brother, during which time Katy and the little girl go to the beach in November/December a lot and Mrs Ashe stays in the boarding house or with her brother.

They make much the same of Paris as they did of London. They do make it to Winchester but no one knows who Jane Austen is and the tour guide is bewildered that Americans make so much fuss of this mysterious woman. The quaint English breakfast foods are tasteless, the weather is damp and grey, they spend all their time in London and cancel any excursions to the pleasanter countryside or to Scotland. Oh yes, this is quite the fictional travelogue. Only then they get to Europe and they spend the whole time miserable! How staid was Katy’s previous life? Well, at boarding school in the previous book, it was the greatest disgrace to look in the direction of the boys at the college next door and Katy set up a Society for the Suppression of Unladylike Conduct so this independent travel is something of a gear change for her. Despite the fact that they end up chaperoned by her naval brother for a huge chunk of this trip, I think that’s actually quite an out-the-box idea for a couple of genteel Midwestern women in 1886. In What Katy Did At School, Katy and her sister Clover go off to a puritanical boarding school for a year, get into trouble and eventually convince their nemesis that they are truly ladylike.Īnd What Katy Did Next covers Katy’s grand tour of Europe, accompanying local wealthy widow Mrs Ashe who wants to take a long break in Europe with her young daughter but is afraid to go alone. So Katy is a long-legged careless sister of five younger siblings who breaks her back and recovers completely thanks to patience and beauty. Lesser known are the four sequels – I didn’t even discover the last two until very recently. Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did found itself back in the headlines a couple of years ago when renowned modern children’s author Jacqueline Wilson wrote her reimagined version of the classic tale, updating 19th century ideas on disability, suffering and recovery. And yes, obviously when bringing a series back in 2020, I’m going to start with a children’s book from 1886! I thought at the beginning of the year that I’d bring back Travel Library and now the world is at it is, I’m actually posting this one that I wrote in January.

Who wrote what katy did next