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. Her books were second in popularity only to Angela Brazil’s during the 1920s and 1930s. The Dimsie books alone had sold half a million hardback copies by 1947. You will be surprised to know that her books are still popular among many different generations.

Early life

Dorita Fairlie Bruce was born Dorothy Morris Fairlie Bruce in Palos, Huelva, Spain, on 20 May 1885, to Alexander Fairlie Bruce MICE (7 September 1857 [2] – 20 January 1944). He was a Scottish civil engineer, and Katherine (Kate) Elizabeth Fairbairn (c. 1861–1931), the daughter of William Freebairn of Drummilling, West Kilbride, Ayrshire.

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. Later at Blairgowrie, Perthshire, where her brother Alan Cathcart Fairlie Bruce (2 March 1894–10 October 1927), 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.

How did Dorita Fairlie Bruce contribute to the Girls’ Guildry?

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 aging father and helped to bring up her brother’s three children after his early death. For more than 30 years, from about 1916 to the late 40s, she was engaged in the Girls’ Guildry.

This was a uniformed girls’ organization 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. She was, for a period in the 30s, president of its West London Centre.

Moreover, 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. In July 1965, The Girls’ Guildry merged the Girls’ Life Brigade Service of England and the Girls Brigade of Ireland to become the Girls’ Brigade.

Why is Dorita Fairlie Bruce considered an influential children’s author?

Like so many other writers, she started writing at an early age and is said to have won a competition for poetry at the age of six. The first time she used her pen name ‘Dorita’ was in small handwritten magazines. After leaving school, she wrote a great number of poems and short stories in various genres for juvenile periodicals and anthologies from about 1905. Most of her short stories are set in Scotland, like the ‘Regiment’ stories, about two children and their pets living with their grandmother in the Campsie Hills. This is also partly the setting of the long historical romance “Greenmantle” (The Girl’s Realm, 1914–15).

Her first known school story, “The Rounders Match” (The Girl’s Realm, 1909), is set in a school, ‘St. Hilary’s,’ vaguely reminiscent of Clarence House. She was a pioneer in creating a series of books that 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.

What are the famous books and series of Dorita?

Here is a list of books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce in the Dimsie series:

• • Dimsie Goes to School

• •  Dimsie Moves Up

• • Dimsie, Head Girl

• • Dimsie Moves Up Again

• • Dimsie Among the Prefects

• • Dimsie Grows Up

• • Captain at Springdale

• • The New House Captain

• • The New House at Springdale

• • Dimsie Intervenes

Here is a list of books in the St. Bride’s and Maudsley (Nancy) series:

• • The Girls of St. Bride’s

• • That Boarding School Girl

• • The New Girl and Nancy

• • Nancy to the Rescue

• • Nancy at St. Bride’s

• • Nancy in the Sixth

• • Nancy Returns to St. Bride’s

• • Nancy Calls the Tune

Here is a list of books in the Springdale series:

• • The Best House in the School

• • Captain of Springdale

• • The new house at Springdale

• • Books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce in the Toby series:

• • The School on the Moor

• • The School in the Woods

• • Toby at Tibbs Cross

List of Books in the Sally series:

• • Sally Scatterbrain

• • Sally Again

• • Sally’s Summer Term

What is the Dimsie series about?

The best-known books of Dorita are the nine ‘Dimsie’ books (1921–41), seven of them set in the ‘Jane Willard Foundation’ (‘Jane’s’) in Kent, the other two in Dimsie’s family home, ‘Twinkle Tap,’ on ‘Loch Shee’ (Gael. ‘Loch of the Fairies’) in Argyll. Any exact site has never been identified. Jane’s is situated on the Kentish coast, most likely at St. Margaret’s Bay, but the buildings are modeled on Bruce’s old school, Clarence House. The school stories follow Dimsie (Daphne Isabel Maitland) from a 10-year-old junior to the popular head girl. The Dimsie books are famous for the ‘Anti-Soppists,’ a group of six girls acting for the good of the school. As her popularity kept soaring, she continued to give one interesting book after the other.

Where Did Dorita Fairlie Bruce Die?

Bruce was above all, despite all her years in London, a Scottish writer. She often went back to Scotland for holidays, as witnessed by the detailed descriptions of the landscape in her many books set there. 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. In this house with its marvelous view of the Firth of Clyde, named ‘Triffeny’ after one of her books, she spent the last 21 years of her life, dying there aged 85 on 21 September 1970.