The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's

The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (published 1881) is the best known of the school stories by the late nineteenth century author Talbot Baines Reed. The stories as well as the book were written for the Boy's Own Paper and published by the Religious Tract Society, with illustrations by Gordon Browne. It was adapted into the 1921 film of the same name, and serialised for TV in four parts in 1961. Reed had no personal experience of a public school education himself; consequently, the book lacked some of the realism of other comparable books like Tom Brown's Schooldays and Eric, or, Little by Little. It also avoids much of the overt moralising and sentimentality found in these books, though a muscular type of Christianity makes occasional appearances. However, the book was written with great enthusiasm and it started a tradition of boarding school stories in British juvenile fiction that lasted until the end of World War II. The novel was serialized as a 14-part 2-page comic in Look and Learn magazine between December 1979 and March 1980.