The Marjorie Dean High School Series and College Series

Josephine Chase wrote the Marjorie Dean books under the pseudonym of Pauline Lester.  The books were published by A. L. Burt.  The Marjorie Dean series is split into three smaller sets of books:  the High School Series, the College Series, and the Post-Graduate Series.

The Marjorie Dean High School series consists of the following four books.

1.  Marjorie Dean, High School Freshman, 1917
2.  Marjorie Dean, High School Sophomore, 1917
3.  Marjorie Dean, High School Junior, 1917
4.  Marjorie Dean, High School Senior, 1917

I do not care to try to write summaries of the individual books, so instead, this is an overview of the set.

Marjorie Dean moves to a new city.  She begins high school and becomes close friends with Jerry, Connie, and several other girls.  Mignon is the class bully, and she hates Marjorie.  Mignon causes most of Marjorie's problems throughout the four-book set.

Mignon is bitter and awful all the way through the set until near the end of the fourth book, when she has a sudden awakening.  The awakening is sudden, forced, and not realistic at all.

These books are overall interesting, but they do have some boring parts.  Marjorie Dean, Sophomore is really good, but then the last one-third of the book drags.  Marjorie Dean, Junior is extremely boring at the start due to an unnecessarily lengthy farewell to a visitor.  The story then gets good.

I enjoyed all four books, except for the boring parts which I just skipped over.

The Marjorie Dean College Series consists of the following books.

1.  Marjorie Dean, College Freshman, 1922
2.  Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore, 1922
3.  Marjorie Dean, College Junior, 1922
4.  Marjorie Dean, College Senior, 1922

In these books, Marjorie and her friends attend Hamilton College.  Their rival is now Leslie Cairns, who is pretty awful.  Marjorie is known as the beauty of the college, and everyone loves her, except for Leslie and her allies.  Marjorie has a great desire to know more about the founder of Hamilton College, Brooke Hamilton, and she finally becomes friendly with Hamilton's niece, elderly Miss Susanna.

While I really enjoy the parts of the stories that center around Leslie Cairns, I find most of the rest to be a bit boring.  The first 80 pages of Marjorie Dean, College Freshman, bored me due to excessive reminiscing.  A portion of Marjorie Dean, College Junior bored me when I had to endure a party that was described in excruciating detail.

I skipped parts of each of these books.  I enjoyed the portions that I did read.