School Days of a Methodist Lady: A Journey Through Girlhood

This book is about a girl, a school and a family in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a deeply personal account of teenage struggles with parental and sibling relationships and with school discipline, study demands, tough living conditions and rigorous religious education. Jill’s daily life as a school boarder, her rebellions, emotional highs and lows, and encounters with Dr Wood, MLC’s charismatic principal and pastor, are described with honesty, hilarity and sharp critical insight.

Testimonials
This frank and searching narrative is, in fact, a compelling social document. The author demonstrates a remarkable ability to recall the details of her life in the middle of the 20th century in Australia, and to construct from her joys and sorrows a … memoir that is warm, thoughtful and inspirational. – Carmel Bird, fiction and non-fiction writer, author of Writing the Story of Your Life

[This is] a meticulously documented and touching memoir of a sensitive and creative schoolgirl at boarding school in the early 1960s – a place where she was often cold, hungry and sad, but also a place of astonishing discovery, both of herself and the big world beyond her own. – Ursula Dubosarsky, children’s and young adult writer, author of The Golden Day

About the author
Jill Sanguinetti grew up in the Victorian country town of Kyabram and went to Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, as a boarder from 1958 to 1961. After graduating from the University of Melbourne, she taught for twenty-five years in schools, community centres, TAFE colleges and at Victoria University, gaining a PhD in Adult Education along the way. Jill divides her time between inner-city Melbourne and a bush retreat near Marysville where she is involved in the struggle for forests.