The use of schoollife as a closed narrative environment is well documented, and modern examplessuch as Malory Towers and Harry Potter show the genre's continuedappeal. While there have been several histories of the school story, especiallyin children's literature, almost all of them take as their starting point TomBrown's Schooldays. Although occasionally acknowledged in passing, therehas never been a complete study of earlier school stories, or of otherfictional portrayals of school life before the middle of the eighteenthcentury.

In Before TomBrown, Robert Kirkpatrick traces the roots of the school story back to2500BC, when school life was a feature of Sumerian, Egyptian and Graeco-Romantexts written as teaching aids for children. From Chaucer's Canterbury Talesto Shakesperean comedies, he explores for the first time the use of schooldialogues in the classroom, in print and on stage, and presents new evidencethat the first school novel appeared in 1607. Finally, he examines the role ofthe school story in the broader development of the novel as the genre becameestablished through the eighteenth century. Readers will be rewarded with awhole new perspective on the history of children's literature.