| Description: |
First published in 1857, Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown's Schooldays has remained popular well into modern times. Hughes was a Rugby alumnus, and dedicated the novel to the widow of his old headmaster, Dr. Thomas Arnold. While the story has entertained generations of mostly young readers, and inspired an entire genre of British boarding school novels, perhaps the character best known to modern readers is the bully Flashman. An important, though ultimately minor character in the first part of Tom Brown's Schooldays, he would later be appropriated as the protagonist of a highly popular series of novels by British author George MacDonald Fraser. |