Re: Slightly OT - need help from my UK literary friends


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Posted by Peter Willis on 9/25/99 from 62.136.45.52 via proxy webcache14b.cache.pol.co.uk:

In Reply to: Slightly OT - need help from my UK literary friends posted by Anne LeVeque on September 22, 1999 at 15:45:09:

The most obvious influence to my mind is the Jennings series by Anthony Buckeridge. Same slightly larky tone, and an assumption that the logical processes, not merely the priorities, of the boys are very different from those of the masters. Going further back, the Billy Bunter books by Frank Richards (who I believe knew Ransome) are perhaps a more broadly comic example - and it all started with Kipling's Stalky & Co. Or perhaps Tom Brown's Schooldays. I (though a dayboy) used to enjoy the genre very much, though can't recall any other authors now.
It was something to do with the closed environmnent, and not infrequently the sense of a common enemy ( I slipped effortlessly into reading Colditz and other PoW escape tales.)which is not present in the Potter books, at least in the shape of the staff who mostly seem to be on his side - the fantasy element transfers the enemy to the Forces of Darkness.
Curiously, though Hogworts is a co-educational school, its literary antecedents seem to be boys' schools - to me at any rate. Girls school stories - and I've read a few - seem to be more straight-laced and moral in tone.


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