ABSTRACT
Although public school stories, novels and biographies are being written to the present day, it is probably fair to say that the strain of ‘serious’ boys’ school stories I have discussed in this book effectively ended after the First World War. It is worth briefly recapping here the fundamental components of these narratives. These texts tend to have a strong political element to them, making connections between the adolescent sphere and the political world, and portraying adolescent life as being about far more than introspective concerns. They also contain some kind of agenda for educational reform – they are not merely historically descriptive works or catalogues of private experience, but dynamic contributions to social and educational debate. Finally, they predominantly involve boys (both fictional and real) who become members of the ruling classes; boys whose parents have private incomes and who go on to become members of the legislative and governing elite. Among them there are lawyers (Butler Burke, Percy Fitzgerald), politicians (John Verney, George Melly), army officers (Harry East, Stalky), philanthropists (Tom Brown, Gerald Eversley) and, of course, writers. It goes without saying that in every biographically-based work, somebody inevitably grows up to be a writer. In this chapter, I will discuss some of the last examples of this genre that appeared during and in the aftermath of the First World War and suggest why the developmental pattern for the ‘ideal’ citizen promoted by public school literature fell into disuse. This period was significant as the time when the idea of civics education was rapidly gaining currency and I will compare the type of civic education advocated by educationalists with that described in literature. I have included in this debate one work written by an adolescent, Alec Waugh’s The Loom of Youth (1917), and some commentaries on it written by schoolboys, as rare examples of boys being invited to reflect on their own situation as developing citizens.
