Tom Brown's Schooldays is one of the classics of English children's literature and one of the earliest books written specifically for boys. The book is more than an account of how 'the commonest type of English boy' fares at an influential public school for it also develops arguments about the nature of good government, moral education, and the integrity of the individual. It is a story which is central to a modern understanding of many leading aspects of Victorian life but its earnestness, its freshness, its lack of cant and its relaxed tolerance keep it vividly alive and help to distinguish it from the often narrow schoolboy (and schoolgirl) adventures that it later inspired.
