ABSTRACT
A striking but comparatively short-lived phenomenon in the world of the novel first appeared in 1857. In that year were published two books, both connected, although entirely differently, with the great public school, Rugby. Tom Brown’s School Days, by Thomas Hughes, needs no introduction. The second book was by George Lawrence, known also as Captain G. A. Lawrence, but in the contemporary book world not known in any other way than as ‘The author of Guy Livingstone’. Ellis, writing of Lawrence’s work, says ‘The earlier novels of Ouida were a direct imitation of the methods of Lawrence, with their dashing guardsmen and flamboyant mode of life. For Edward Tinsley, and other young men of his age, Lawrence’s writing was by these serious qualities set apart from the ‘sensation novels’ of writers such as Ouida, Mrs Henry Wood, and others.
