Before Tom Brown

The Origins of the School Story
The first full exploration of school stories in plays, classroom exercises and early novels, from 2500BC to the eighteenth century.
The use of school life as a closed narrative environment is well documented, and modern examples such as Malory Towers and Harry Potter show the genre's continued appeal. While there have been several histories of the school story, especially in children's literature, almost all of them take as their starting point Tom Brown's Schooldays. Although occasionally acknowledged in passing, there has never been a complete study of earlier school stories, or of other fictional portrayals of school life before the middle of the eighteenth century. In Before Tom Brown, Robert Kirkpatrick traces the roots of the school story back to 2500BC, when school life was a feature of Sumerian, Egyptian and Graeco-Roman texts written as teaching aids for children. From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Shakesperean comedies, he explores for the first time the use of school dialogues in the classroom, in print and on stage, and presents new evidence that the first school novel appeared in 1607. Finally, he examines the role of the school story in the broader development of the novel as the genre became established through the eighteenth century. Readers will be rewarded with a whole new perspective on the history of children's literature.

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.