From BookJive
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| Edition: | Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback) |
| Author: | Thomas Hughes |
| Published: | August 2008 |
| Pages: | 466 |
| ISBN 10: | 0199537305 |
| New: | $5.95 (29) |
| Used: | $3.06 (28) |
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Tom Brown's Schooldays is a novel by Thomas Hughes first published in 1857. The story is set at Rugby School, a public school for boys, in the 1830s. Hughes attended Rugby School from 1834 to 1842. The novel has been the source for several film and television adaptations in the 20th century.
The novel was originally published as being "by an Old Boy of Rugby", and much of it is based on the author's experiences. Tom Brown is largely based on the author's brother, George Hughes; and George Arthur, another of the book's main characters, is based on Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. The fictional Tom's life also resembles the author's in that the culminating event of his school career was a cricket match.
Tom Brown was tremendously influential on the genre of British school novels, which began in the 19th century, and led to St. Trinians, Billy Bunter's Greyfriars, Mr Chips' Brookfield and Hogwarts. It is one of the few still in print from its time. A sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford, was published in 1861 but is not as well known.
Tom's principal enemy at Rugby is Flashman, a bully. The 20th-century writer George MacDonald Fraser would feature Flashman in a series of successful historical novels.
Plot summary
Tom Brown is energetic, stubborn, kind-hearted, and athletic more than intellectual. He acts according to his feelings and the unwritten rules of the boys around him more than adults' rules. The early chapters of the novel deal with his childhood at his home in the Vale of White Horse (including a nostalgic picture of a village feast). Much of the scene setting in the first chapter is deeply revealing of Victorian England's attitudes towards society and class, and contains an interesting comparison of so-called Saxon and Norman influences on England. This part of the book, when young Tom wanders the valleys freely on his pony, serves as a sort of Eden with which to contrast the later hellish experiences at school.
His first school year was at a local school. His second year started at a private school, but due to an epidemic of fever in the area, all the school's boys were sent home, and Tom was transferred mid-term to Rugby School, where he made acquaintance with the adults and boys who lived at the school and in its environs.
On his arrival, the eleven-year-old Tom Brown is looked after by a more experienced classmate, Harry "Scud" East. Soon after, Tom and East become the targets of a bully named Flashman. The intensity of the bullying increases, and, after refusing to hand over a sweepstake ticket for the favourite in a horse race, Tom is deliberately burned in front of a fire. Tom and East eventually defeat Flashman with the help of a kind (though comical) older boy. In their triumph they become unruly.
In the second half of the book, Dr. Thomas Arnold, the historical headmaster of the school at the time, gives Tom the care of a new boy named George Arthur, frail, pious, academically brilliant, gauche, and sensitive. A fight that Tom gets into to protect Arthur, and Arthur's nearly dying of fever, are described in loving detail. Tom and Arthur help each other and their friends develop into young gentlemen who say their nightly prayers, do not cheat on homework, and are on the cricket team. An epilogue shows Tom's return to Rugby and its chapel when he hears of Dr. Arnold's death.
