ABSTRACT
The quantity o f material available for analysis during the years to be covered here is great. This raises two difficulties. First, selection is inevitable, but the aim here must be to examine a wide range o f material; thus, some books considered at the time to be o f both high and low literary quality will be discussed. Second, the method of organising the material to be presented is a problem. O f the two previous systematic accounts, that o f Hicks, when analysing the period 1910 to 1930, used a system of categories partly based on the content of the books examined and partly on the attitudes displayed. His categories were: the day school, the common room, the anti-sentimentalists, the enthus iasts, and the social critics (Hicks, 1933: 27-38). Quigley (1982), covering the whole period from 1857 until today, also used categories to order her material that were based upon literary content. Here, we shall examine books for adults or for general readership, then those specifically for adolescents, in each case emphasising the tendency towards writing in a critical spirit and in the second case focusing especially upon the movement towards the standardisation o f the boys’ school story. Finally, before drawing some conclusions, the changing social structure supporting the tendencies observed will be very briefly described.
