Dorothy Whitehill

Dorothy Whitehill was a children's author active in the early twentieth century; reliable public information about her life is limited, and neither her dates of birth and death nor her nationality have been authoritatively recorded. She is known for the Polly Pendleton series of girls' boarding-school novels, including Polly's First Year at Boarding School and Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School, and also wrote the Page Twins and Joyce Payton series. Four of her works are held in this collection, among them Phyllis: A Twin and The Twins in the South. Most were published by Barse & Hopkins of New York between the 1910s and 1940s. Her stories center on American boarding-school life and the coming of age of young girls, told in a warm, approachable style with attention to everyday detail and character, and they found a readership among girls of the period.