Elinor M Brent Dyer was born in South Shields (in a house in Winchester Street) in 1894 and her name at birth was Gladys Eleanor May Dyer.

Elinor moved south to Fareham in 1922 or 1923 and taught at Western House School which still exists under the name of Wykeham House School.The school was founded by Mrs Baylis at Orme Lodge in West Street, Fareham in 1913.

It was during her time in Fareham that Elinor recreated herself. She changed her name to Elinor May Brent-Dyer (Brent was a family name from her father's side of the family. He was a Portsmouth man by birth and it is thought that the reason Elinor moved so far south was to perhaps make contact with this side of her family. Her parents had separated when she was very young and she had little knowledge of her father's family.) Elinor's first book Gerry Goes to School had just been published and it was while living in Fareham that Elinor spent holidays in Guernsey 1923(which inspired her La Rochelle series of books) and in the Tyrol in Austria 1924 (which was the inspiration for the start of the Chalet School series). So although Elinor was not inspired by Hampshire it was here that she really launched her career as a writer of school and family stories.

The book Behind the Chalet School by Helen McClelland is still available in an edition by Bettany Press.

One other link is that the main characters of the Chalet School books, Madge and Joey Bettany, certainly spent a holiday in a house in the New Forest (this was a stand alone story in a Christmas Annual for Girls - though I cannot now recall the exact details)