Before Tom Brown

Robert J. Kirkpatrick is the author of several books on children's literature, including The Encyclopaedia of Boys' School Stories (2000), From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha'penny Dreadfuller: A Bibliographic History of the Boys' Periodical in Britain 1752-1950 (2013) and The Men Who Drew for Boys (and Girls): 101 Forgotten Illustrators of Children's Books 1844-1970 (2019). He is a long-standing member of the Children's Books History Society (and the Society's Secretary since 2010), and has twice won the Society's Harvey Darton Award.

• AcknowledgementsviiIntroduction11Early School Dialogues and Texts: From 2500 bc to ad 100052Chaucer's Schoolboy313Fifteenth-­ to Seventeenth-­Century Vulgaria and Colloquies384Schools and Schoolboys on the Stage765The First School Novel: Dobsons Drie Bobbes1226Defoe's Quarrelling Schoolboys1327School Life in the Early ­English Novel1438Education outside School: Émile, The Fool of Quality and Sandford and Merton1729The Genre Established: School Stories, 1749-85190Further Reading223

This is a rare achievement - a book that ends where all other books on the subject begin! \i Before Tom Brown \i0 traces 2000 unexplored years of the school story, unearthing forgotten texts and manuscripts, and re-writing literary and educational history. This readable, scholarly, and meticulously researched book is truly remarkable in its range and originality. Robert Kirkpatrick, independent scholar, is one of a kind.