Howard Baker at the Greyfriars Press, hardcover, illustrated, 18.5 cms x 27.4 cms x 2.4 cms, closed tear to dust jacket otherwise condition: as new.
Billy Bunter is a fictional schoolboy was created by Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, a fictional English public school in Kent, originally published in the boys' weekly story paper The Magnet from 1908 to 1940. The character has appeared in novels, on television, in stage plays and in comic strips.
He is in the Lower Fourth form of Greyfriars School, known as the Remove, whose members are 1415 years of age. Time is frozen in the Greyfriars stories; although the reader sees the passing of the seasons, the characters' ages do not change and they remain in the same year groups. Originally a minor character, Bunter's role was expanded over the years with his antics being heavily used in the stories for comic relief and to advance the plots.
Bunter's defining characteristics are his naive greed, self-indulgence, and overweight appearance.[2] He is in many respects an obnoxious anti-hero. Besides his gluttony, he is obtuse, lazy, racist, nosy, deceitful, pompous, and conceited, but he is blissfully unaware of his defects. In his own mind, he is a handsome, talented, and naturally aristocratic young man surrounded by uncouth "beasts". His vices are offset by several redeeming features, including a sporadic but genuine courage in aid of others; his ability to be generous during his rare occasions of prosperity; and above all his very real love and concern for his mother. All these, along with Bunter's irrepressible optimism, and his comically transparent untruthfulness and inept attempts to conceal his antics from his schoolmasters and schoolfellows, combine to make the character highly entertaining, though hardly sympathetic.
The Magnet was a British weekly boys' story paper published by Amalgamated Press. It ran from 1908 to 1940, publishing a total of 1,683 issues.
Each issue contained a long school story about the boys of Greyfriars School, a fictional public school located somewhere in Kent, and were written under the pen-name of "Frank Richards." The most famous Greyfriars character was Billy Bunter, of the Remove. The vast majority of the stories were written by author Charles Hamilton, although substitute writers were sometimes used when he could not supply copy. Most issues of The Magnet also included a shorter serial story (a variety of detective, scouting, and adventure yarns were featured), and many issues also included a newspaper ostensibly produced by the characters themselves and called the Greyfriars Herald. These parts of the paper were not written by Charles Hamilton.
This book contains facsimile reprints of The Magnet.
