Tom Brown's Schooldays

The classic novel of athleticism and muscular Christianity. One of the classics of English children's literature, and one of the earliest books written specifically for boys, this novel's steady popularity has given it an influence well beyond the upper middle-class world that it describes. It tells a story central to an understanding of Victorian life, but its freshness helps to distinguish it from the narrow schoolboy adventures that it later inspired. "My sole object in writing was to preach to boys; if ever I write again, it will be to preach to some other age. I cant' see that a man has any business to write at all unless he has something which he thoroughly believes he wants to preach about. If he has this and the chance of delivering himself of it, let him by all means put it in the shape in which it will be most likely to get a hearing; but let him never be so carried away as to forget that preaching is the object." -Thomas Hughes "Life isn't all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman's education." -- Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays "Thomas Hughes, who has been described as 'the incarnation of the highest form of the British schoolboy, the best type of the character of the school which molded him,' has immortalized Rugby scenes in 'Tom Brown's Schooldays.'" -The Dial "Thomas Hughes, the author of 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' and 'Tom Brown at Oxford,' one of the best fellows who ever lived, was a more genuine representative of muscular Christianity than Charles Kingsley, who has always been regarded as the founder....Tom Hughes would have faced a tornado of east wind to do a kind act or redress an injustice. In his college days he had been a first-rate athlete, and had rowed at Henley in the famous crew which, when one of its men was disabled, and the rival crew refused to allow a substitute, rowed with seven oars against eight, and won the race....Never was there a more jovial or a more pleasant companion. It was like him to leave, as it seems he did, an injunction against the publication of a memorial of his life, to be added to the flood of literature of that kind. But 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' and 'Tom Brown at Oxford' are his autobiography." -The Atlantic Monthly Contents PART I. CHAPTER I—THE BROWN FAMILY CHAPTER II—THE "VEAST." CHAPTER III—SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES. CHAPTER IV—THE STAGE COACH. CHAPTER V—RUGBY AND FOOTBALL. CHAPTER VI—AFTER THE MATCH. CHAPTER VII—SETTLING TO THE COLLAR. CHAPTER VIII—THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. CHAPTER IX—A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. PART II. CHAPTER I—HOW THE TIDE TURNED. CHAPTER II—THE NEW BOY. CHAPTER III—ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND. CHAPTER IV—THE BIRD-FANCIERS. CHAPTER V—THE FIGHT: CHAPTER VI—FEVER IN THE SCHOOL. CHAPTER VII—HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND DELIVERANCES. CHAPTER VIII—TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH. CHAPTER IX—FINIS.