At Boarding School With the Tucker Twins

At Boarding School With the Tucker Twins is the second book in Nell Speed’s long running Tucker Twins series, following the twin sisters Tweedles and Dum Tucker as they leave home for the boarding school setting that gives the novel its title. Nell Speed was the pen name of Emma Speed Sampson, an early twentieth century American author who wrote a number of long running series for young readers, particularly girls. Her Tucker Twins series ran for ten books between 1915 and 1925, and the boarding school entries are some of the most popular in the wider sequence.

The boarding school novel was a foundational subgenre of girls’ series fiction in the early twentieth century, with writers like L.T. Meade in Britain and various American writers including Speed, Edith Bancroft, and Annie Fellows Johnston producing dozens of school stories across the period. The conventions are familiar. New girls arrive at school. Friendships form, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Rivals appear, mysteries develop, schoolgirl pranks lead to misunderstandings, and adventures both academic and personal fill the school year. The Tucker Twins entry into this subgenre fits squarely within the conventions while giving Speed room to develop her two protagonists alongside the wider supporting cast that the school setting provides.

Speed writes in the breezy chapter book style typical of the era, with brisk plotting, light moralizing, and a clear sense of who her audience is. The novel is meant for girls aged roughly ten to fifteen and was designed to be both entertaining and improving in the slightly didactic mode of the period. The boarding school setting gives the writer room to bring together a larger cast of girls from different backgrounds than the home setting of the first book had allowed, and the relationships that develop across the school year drive much of the novel.

For scholars of children’s literature, of girls’ series fiction, or of early twentieth century American publishing, Speed’s work is part of the larger story of how the modern young adult genre developed. Many of her books are now in the public domain.