Public School Literature, Civic Education and the Politics of Male Adolescence

Holt argues that the social construction of the public schoolboy, a figure made ubiquitous by a huge body of fictional, biographical, and journalistic work, had a disproportionate role to play in the development of social perceptions of adolescence in British society, and on ideas of civic education. This book will engage not only scholars of children's literature but Victorianists and those interested in the history of educational practice.

Jenny Holt is a lecturer in English literature at Meiji University, Japan.

Contents: Introduction; The crisis of youth and the public school reformation; An education for active citizenship: Tom Brown's Schooldays; 'Beastly Erikin': nature, God and the adolescent boy; What exactly does 'moderate and reasonable' mean? Debates on discipline in Victorian public school literature; 'It's not brutality ... it's boy; only boy': public schools and adolescence at the turn of the century; The death of an ideal; Bibliography; Index.