ABSTRACT
At the climax of the 1788 story The History of a Schoolboy, the hero, George Manly, comforts a vagrant former slave who has been abused by his violent, insensitive and conformist schoolmates. George, weeping, addresses the man as ‘my brother’, and expresses the fervent wish that slavery might be abolished.3 At this point in the story, the anonymous author interjects and compares abused slaves to schoolboys who are beaten by their masters. Juveniles and slaves, he implies, have reason to feel commonality, and both are in need of liberation. The egalitarian History of a Schoolboy is thus of essence a protest text and it is interesting that a book of this kind should have been probably the very first maleoriented school story.4 Robert Kirkpatrick suggests that it was written by Thomas Day and, indeed, the narrative fits well with the ideals of Day and his circle.5 This group included figures such as Joseph Priestley and Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who were striving to establish a tradition of liberal schooling on nonconformist, egalitarian grounds, with a greater emphasis on practical subjects.5 Like many other types of juvenile literature, therefore, the school story has roots in the
and citizenship training which it sought to promote.
