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Tom Merry is the principal character in the "St Jim's" stories which appeared in the boy's weekly paper, The Gem , from 1907 to 1939. The stories were all written using the pen-name of Martin Clifford, the majority by Charles Hamilton who was more widely known as Frank Richards, the creator of Billy Bunter.
The first Tom Merry story appeared in Gem number 3 dated 10 March 1907 and introduced him as a new boy at a school called Clavering College. In issue number 11, Clavering was closed down and the boys and masters transferred to St Jim's, a school which has previously featured in a boy's paper called "Pluck". From this time onwards the pattern was established and St Jim's and, Tom Merry made weekly appearances.
In his initial appearance, Merry was a likeable boy who was dominated by his overbearing nurse and guardian, Miss Priscilla Fawcett. As the years passed her influence disappeared and Merry became the acknowledged leader of the lower school of St Jim's and the focal point of most of the stories.
As his name suggests, he was cheerful and good humoured. He was also good at sports and a natural leader. With his friends, Manners and Lowther, he formed a group known as the 'Terrible Three' who were looked up to by all other juniors.
After a lull, interest in Charles Hamilton's writing increased during the 1950s and further St Jim's stories were published by Spring Books from about 1949 and by Mandeville from the 1950s. There were 13 books in all which books re-introduced the characters that appeared in the Gem in pre-war days. St. Jim's stories were also published in six Tom Merry Annuals published by Mandeville from 1949 to 1954. Eleven Tom Merry stories were also published in the 1950s by Gold Hawk in paperback form.
In the 1970s Howard Baker Press published over 20 Gem Volumes in facsimile form.
Greyfriars School is a fictional English public school used as a setting in the long-running series of stories by the writer Charles Hamilton, who wrote under the pen-name of Frank Richards. Although the stories are focused on the Remove, whose most famous pupil was Billy Bunter, other characters also featured on a regular basis.
Charles Harold St. John Hamilton was an English writer, specialising in writing long-running series of stories for weekly magazines about recurrent casts of characters, his most frequent and famous genre being boys' public school stories, though he also wrote in other genres. He used a variety of pen-names, generally using a different name for each set of characters he wrote about, the most famous being Frank Richards for the Greyfriars School stories featuring Billy Bunter. Other important pen-names included Martin Clifford, Owen Conquest and Ralph Redway. He also wrote hundreds of stories under his real name such as the Ken King stories for The Modern Boy.
William George Bunter is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, a fictional English public school in Kent, originally published in the boys' weekly story paper The Magnet from 1908 to 1940. The character has appeared in novels, on television, in stage plays and in comic strips.
Victor Ambrus was a Hungarian-born British illustrator of history, folk tales, and animal story books. He also became known from his appearances on the Channel 4 television archaeology series Time Team, on which he visualised how sites under excavation may have once looked. Ambrus was an Associate of the Royal College of Art and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers. He was also a patron of the Association of Archaeological Illustrators and Surveyors up until its merger with the Institute for Archaeologists in 2011.
The Magnet was a British weekly boys' story paper published by Amalgamated Press. It ran from 1908 to 1940, publishing a total of 1,683 issues.
The Gem (1907–1939) was a story paper published in Great Britain by Amalgamated Press in the early 20th century, predominantly featuring the activities of boys at the fictional school St. Jim's. These stories were all written using the pen-name of "Martin Clifford," the majority by Charles Hamilton. Many issues also included a shorter serial story ; these parts of the paper were not written by Charles Hamilton.
A story paper is a periodical publication similar to a literary magazine, but featuring illustrations and text stories, and aimed towards children and teenagers. Also known in Britain as "boys' weeklies", story papers were phenomenally popular before the outbreak of the Second World War.
The school story is a fiction genre centring on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, at its most popular in the first half of the twentieth century. While examples do exist in other countries, it is most commonly set in English boarding schools and mostly written in girls' and boys' subgenres, reflecting the single-sex education typical until the 1950s. It focuses largely on friendship, honour and loyalty between pupils. Plots involving sports events, bullies, secrets, rivalry and bravery are often used to shape the school story.
Elizabeth Gertrude Bunter, better known as Bessie Bunter, is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton, who also created her more famous brother Billy Bunter.
Charles Henry Chapman (1879–1972), who signed his work as C. H. Chapman, was a British illustrator and cartoonist best known for his work in boys' story papers such as The Magnet where the character Billy Bunter appeared. He later illustrated Bunter cartoon strips and several Bunter books published in the 1950s and 1960s.
Magazines intended for boys fall into one of three classifications. These are comics which tell the story by means of strip cartoons; story papers which have several short stories; and pulp magazines which have a single, but complete, novella in them. The latter were not for the younger child and were often detective or western in content and were generally greater in cost. Several titles were published monthly whereas the other two categories were more frequent.
"Boys' Weeklies" is an essay by George Orwell in which he analyses those weekly story-paper publications for boys which were current around 1940. After being published in Horizon in abridged form, it was published alongside two of his other pieces in Inside the Whale and Other Essays from Victor Gollancz Ltd.
The Schoolgirls' Own was a British weekly story paper aimed at girls. Published by Amalgamated Press, it was launched in February 1921 and ran for 798 issues until May 1936, when it was merged with a sister publication.
The Secret Seven series is an 11 part series of stories published in The Magnet magazine in 1934. The author was prolific writer Charles Hamilton, writing under the pen name Frank Richards. The series was republished by the Howard Baker as two volumes of Magnet facsimile editions in 1976.
Critical Essays (1946) is a collection of wartime pieces by George Orwell. It covers a variety of topics in English literature, and also includes some pioneering studies of popular culture. It was acclaimed by critics, and Orwell himself thought it one of his most important books.
Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School is a BBC Television show broadcast from 1952 to 1961. It was based on the Greyfriars School stories, written by author Charles Hamilton under the pen name Frank Richards. Hamilton wrote all of the scripts for the television show.
Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School is a school story by Charles Hamilton writing as Frank Richards, using the characters and settings of the Greyfriars School stories published from 1908 to 1940 in The Magnet. The retail price was 5 shillings.
School Friend was the name of two different British weekly publications marketed toward girls, both of which were pioneering in their respective categories. The first School Friend, published from 1919 to 1929, was the first story paper marketed exclusively to girls. The second School Friend, published from 1950 to 1965, is considered the first British girls' comic. Although both published by Amalgamated Press, and both marketed toward girls, the content of the two publications was not directly related.
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