Manliness and the Boys' Story Paper in Britain

"Between the Crimean War and the Second World War, British boys grew into manhood reading the exploits of Jack Harkaway, Sexton Blake and Billy Bunter. The boys story paper was the precursor to the comic book, presenting exhilarating tales of escapist adventure that influenced the worldview of readers. In this lively cultural history, Kelly Boyd breaks with previous studies that concentrated on the middle-class yarns of the Boy's Own Paper to explore the stories that most boys actually read. She recreates the fiction factories that supplied boys with thrills each week - the world of the entrepreneur publishers, Edwin J. Brett, Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe), and D.C. Thomson, as well as Frank Richards, the prolific author of the Greyfriars stories.

Their formulaic tales contained assumptions about imperialism, race and women. But most of all they taught boys what it meant to be a man. Kelly Boyd employs the story papers to demonstrate how masculinity was reshaped and transformed during the heyday of empire. This is an important contribution to the social history of popular culture, childhood and gender."--Jacket.