Tom Browns School Days

Recounts the adventures of a young English boy at boarding school in the early nineteenth century.

"Hypnotic . . . a profoundly rewarding read." Kurt Vonnegut

"If ever there was a time when I felt that 'watcher-of-the-skies-when-a-new-planet' stuff, it was when I read the first Flashman."–P.G. Wodehouse The first novel in the Flashman series Fraser revives Flashman, a caddish bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, and relates Flashman’s adventures after he is expelled in drunken disgrace from Rugby school in the late 1830s. Flashy enlists in the Eleventh Light Dragoons and is promptly sent to India and Afghanistan, where despite his consistently cowardly behavior he always manages to come out on top. Flashman is an incorrigible anti-hero for the ages. This humorous adventure book will appeal to fans of historical fiction, military fiction, and British history as well as to fans of Clive Cussler, James Bond, and The Three Musketeers.

Three of George MacDonald Fraser’s incomparable and hilarious novels featuring the lovable rogue, soldier, cheat, and coward: Harry Paget Flashman. Praised by everyone from John Updike to Jane Smiley, Fraser was an acknowledged master of comedy and satire, an unrivaled storyteller, whose craft was matched only by his impeccable historical research. And his greatest creation was, of course, Flashman. The novels collected here find our hero in the midst of his usual swashbuckling adventures of derring-do: fleeing adversaries in the First Anglo-Afghan War; meeting and nearly deceiving a young Abraham Lincoln in America; alternately impersonating a native Indian cavalry recruit and wooing women in India; and managing, whatever the circumstances, to keep his hero’s reputation unsullied. A must-have treat for the legions of dedicated Flashman fans, and a delightful introduction for those lucky enough to be encountering him for the first time.

“A jolly read.”—The Wall Street Journal The tenth installment in The Flashman Papers finds Captain Harry Flashman of Her Majesty's Secret Service in the antebellum South, where the irrepressible, globe-trotting Victorian becomes the target of blackmailing beauties. Evading danger, bedding women, and profiting from every opportunity, Flashman once again weasels his way into history, this time in John Brown’s raid of Harper’s Ferry, just before the Civil War. As a result of Flashy’s letching, lying, cheating, and stealing on land, on sea, and on the rails, not only did John Brown become a martyr, Lincoln became president, and the nation plunged into a bloodbath.

“Hilariously funny.”—The New York Times Book Review “Great dirty fun!”—Grand Rapids Press “The most entertaining anti-hero in a long time… Moves from one ribald and deliciously corrupt episode to the next… Wonderful and scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly The fourth volume of memoirs in which Harry Flashman confronts destiny with Lord Cardigan and the Light Brigade. Part of the Flashman series, comprising Flashman, Royal Flash, and Flash for Freedom, among others, which explores the successful though scandalous later career of the bully in Tom Brown's School Days.

A surprising number of classic English authors wrote school stories, from Mary Shelley and Maria Edgeworth through Evelyn Waugh and Stephen Spender. Coverage spans two centuries of fiction set in the endowed private schools called Public Schools in England. Famous works such as Tom Brown's Schooldays by Hughes and Stalky & Co. by Kipling are described, along with books of accomplished but lesser-known writers such as Charles Turley, Eden Phillpotts, Talbot Baines Reed, and Desmond Coke. In addition to their pure entertainment value, these novels preserve a wealth of cultural information: class attitudes, sexual development, sports history, consciousness of Empire, role of the Established Church, study of the Classics. Biographical sketches are provided for most of the authors.