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June 2, 2009 6:51 PM Subscribe
The Magnet (scroll down on the linked page to see scanned copies of the magazine) published stories about an English public school called
Greyfriars from 1908 until 1940.
Additional scans of Greyfriars stories from The Magnet
here as jpgs.
Jeffrey Richards wrote an
interesting book about the function of the British public school in fiction which I enjoyed very much. Public school was a huge influence in upper-class British life from the
Victorian era forward.
Alec Waugh (Evelyn's brother), who wrote a scandalous (for the time)
thinly-disguised autobiography about his experiences at
Sherborne, discusses the system in
this book. The evolution of the ideal of adolescence itself was worked out in some ways in public school stories - the first novel which used the word adolescence was about public school. This is, of course, public school in the British sense, which is private and expensive. Anxiety about a perceived decline in British morality and shifting gender roles focused attention on the education of young men. Interestingly, the primary readers of public school stories were young boys who did not attend public schools, and many of the stories written about public schools disproportionately emphasized virtues like obedience to authority that were suitable for the audience, if not faithful to the reality of public school life.
School stories were an important part of the popular landscape in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century.
P. G.
Wodehouse contributed a
number in his time. My favorite are the
Mike and Psmith stories.
Desmond Coke's
The Bending of a Twig quotes heavily from famous school boy stories in a sort of ongoing meta-commentary throughout the book.
The St. Dominic's stories by Talbot Baines Reed were very popular, though he himself had never attended a public school.
A
nonfictional account of attending Eton.
A fictional account. Note that some thirty years and the First World War separates the accounts, during which there were vast shifts in popular conceptions of public schools and citizenship.
posted by winna (18 comments total)
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posted by xthlc at 7:02 PM on June 2, 2009