Richmal Crompton, The Woman Behind Just William

As a specialist in the history of children’s literature and editor of the Just William magazine, Mary Cadogan speaks with an authoritative voice in this fascinating biography. Richmal Crompton’s William, a scruffy, adventurous hero, is known to those who have never even read the books, along with Ginger and the awful Violet Elizabeth. Crompton (died 1969) was a learned, classics scholar and a dedicated teacher. Her many adult novels seem to have become lost in time, yet her William books, the first of which was published in 1922 and the 38th, shortly after her death in 1970, ‘remain immensely readable, retaining their sparkle and satirical edge today’.

Since the 1980s they have enjoyed a happy revival, maybe through the audio recordings read so aptly by Martin Jarvis. Cadogan includes here enough detail to delight, and many who have heard or read of the exploits of this ‘dirty rapscallion of a boy with a crooked tie and a grimy collar’ will find much of interest in this biography of an author born in the late 19th century into a family with high Victorian values.