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The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's
Serialised in "Thr Boy's Own Paper" prior to book publication in 1881. Reed's school stories for boys (all of which appeared in the BOP) popularised the genre.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1881
About the author
Talbot Baines Reed
67 books5 followersTalbot Baines Reed (3 April 1852 – 28 November 1893) was an English writer of boys' fiction who established a genre of school stories that endured into the second half of the 20th century. Among his best-known work is The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's. He was a regular and prolific contributor to The Boy's Own Paper (B.O.P.), in which most of his fiction first appeared. Through his family's business, Reed became a prominent typefounder, and wrote a classic History of the Old English Letter Foundries.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 6, 2011
At first I struggled with this one. I thought this was because of the dated slang and the apparently complacent way in which all the arcane hierarchies and rituals of a Victorian boarding school were being described. The pace seemed slow too.
But about a quarter of a way in I realised this was a beautifully plotted story about one boy's gradual downfall and the triumph (through adversity) of another. Although there's plenty of humour, it's actually a profoundly serious book.
Although commentators have sneered at some of the more overtly preachy passages, I think it is a subtle and skiful moral story. (Probably a lot of the issue-based teenage fiction of today will be laughed at too in 100 years' time.) The boys of St Dominic's have to deal with gambling, money-lending, deciding whether or not to sneak into the local pub, and cheating in exminations.
Although Oliver Greenfield the central character does some obligatory good moves on the rugger pitch, he is not a conventionally macho character. He's a young man who tries hard to do what he thinks is right, rather than just following conventional codes of behaviour. When a prefect hits him, he doesn't fight back. When he is suspected of wrongdoing, he waits to see if his name will be cleared - and to see which if any of his friends will keep faith with him.
Similarly Loman, the young man who could easily have been depicted as the villain of the piece, is portrayed with considerable sympathy and psychological insight.
So while there are a few crudely melodramatic passages, this book turned out to be enjoyably complex. Despite initial appearances, this is far more than a period piece. It is a classic novel - which a lot of contemporary adults might enjoy.
But about a quarter of a way in I realised this was a beautifully plotted story about one boy's gradual downfall and the triumph (through adversity) of another. Although there's plenty of humour, it's actually a profoundly serious book.
Although commentators have sneered at some of the more overtly preachy passages, I think it is a subtle and skiful moral story. (Probably a lot of the issue-based teenage fiction of today will be laughed at too in 100 years' time.) The boys of St Dominic's have to deal with gambling, money-lending, deciding whether or not to sneak into the local pub, and cheating in exminations.
Although Oliver Greenfield the central character does some obligatory good moves on the rugger pitch, he is not a conventionally macho character. He's a young man who tries hard to do what he thinks is right, rather than just following conventional codes of behaviour. When a prefect hits him, he doesn't fight back. When he is suspected of wrongdoing, he waits to see if his name will be cleared - and to see which if any of his friends will keep faith with him.
Similarly Loman, the young man who could easily have been depicted as the villain of the piece, is portrayed with considerable sympathy and psychological insight.
So while there are a few crudely melodramatic passages, this book turned out to be enjoyably complex. Despite initial appearances, this is far more than a period piece. It is a classic novel - which a lot of contemporary adults might enjoy.
October 23, 2018
This is an author and a subgenre of juvenile literature that are now mostly forgotten but were very popular at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in Britain. I'm talking about British public school stories and its greatest author of the Victorian era, Talbot Baines Reed. These stories were set in boarding schools for boys (schools for girls had their own equivalent subgenre and authors, often treating similar themes to their male counterparts). The Boy's Own Paper, the publication where this book was serialized in 1881, sold half a million units of each number at that time, and was read by young and teenaged boys. This genre would flourish until after WWII, when it declined due to the changes in the schooling system which made these stories seem outdated and the increasing competition from TV and radio entertainment. For non-British readers, public schools are private, exclusive boarding schools, called "public" because they were open to any pupils whose parents could pay the fees.
P. G. Wodehouse, who before becoming one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century also started as a writer of public school stories, called Talbot Baines Reed "the most successful of schoolboy writers, in that he wrote a great many stories, and all of them good, some infinitely better than others but none weak."
The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's is Talbot Baines Reed's second novel. It's his most famous novel, although he has a dozen others of similar quality, all of which can be downloaded for free at Project Gutenberg, being out of copyright.
Following in the tradition and conventions started by Thomas Hughes in his very successful "Tom Brown's School Days" (1857), Talbot Baines Reed was nevertheless a different kind of writer. He also wrote for boys, but he was not a moralizer like Hughes, at least not in such an explicit way. His stories, even though the setting is so old-fashioned for modern readers, nevertheless are easy and pleasant to read and very entertaining. He told well-plotted stories and his characters were not one-dimensional. His heroes were not perfect and his villains had some redeeming qualities. In this novel, for example, Edward Loman is one of the two main villains, but despicable as he gets throughout the story, he is not evil. When young Stephen Greenfield becomes his fag (new boys were expected to do menial tasks for a senior boy, who in exchange became their mentor when needed), Loman treats him decently, at least before his gradual corruption, for he doesn't really have the inclinations of a bully. He is a boy with good qualities and some character weaknesses, and it's those flaws that gradually get him in an spiral of dishonesty, further corrupting him until he is -almost- beyond redemption.
British Public schools were quite remarkable institutions. Sometimes they seemed more interested in moulding their pupil's characters than in imparting knowledge. They wanted to form leaders (Britain was a great empire at the time) and thus gave senior boys a surprising amount of freedom and authority over their juniors. Some senior boys (the prefects or monitors) are in charge of keeping order and they are expected to exercise their power in an honorable manner. Masters only intervene if things get out of hand. These schools were capable of inspiring very strong loyalty in many of their pupils, and for others, less suited to their "muscular Christianity" brand of education, they were a miserable experience. We only see the good side of them in these idealized stories. They are tales of schoolboy honor, loyalty and friendship, and can also get dramatic in the problems the young heroes go through in these closed societies.
This book is about the downfall of two senior boys, one undeserved (Oliver Greenfield's) and one well-deserved (Edwards Loman's). Ultimately, it's an optimistic story, so it's also a tale of redemption.
The story starts with the arrival at school of Stephen Greenfield, eleven years old and younger brother of Oliver Greenfield. We share his puzzlement and insecurities as he tries to fit in in the well-regimented society of the school as a new boy. As a form of good-natured hazing by senior boys he is made to think that he has to write a paper and present it to the headmaster, answering a list of impossible questions that, young Stephen fears, will expose his ignorance and unsuitability to be in the school. He also has to find his place among the two informal clubs or fraternities that divide the younger boys: you have to be either a Tadpole or a Guinea-Pig, but you do not get to choose. The two groups draw lots for you, and thus young Stephen joins the proud institution of Guinea-Pigdom. The younger boys (the Junior Fourth Form) are a lot of fun. High-spirited, foolish, boisterous and eager to sign up for any riot, Tadpoles and Guinea-Pigs are fierce rivals but are always ready to join forces against a common enemy at any injustice, real or perceived, from senior boys.
But the real main characters are two Fifth-Form friends, Oliver Greenfield (Stephen's older brother) and Horace Wraysford. We follow their adventures and the story of the rivalry between the Fifth Form and the Sixth Form. There are cricket and rugby matches, both intra-school and against outside rivals, given disproportionate importance by the boys. There is also the satirical paper that the Fifth-Form boys produce, very wittily ridiculing the Sixth Form and also the Tadpoles and Guinea-Pigs. We also see how Wraysford saves young Stephen's life in a boating accident during the holidays.
The situation gets more dramatic when Loman gets in debt with a disreputable character in town, and when Oliver Greenfield is suspected of stealing an exam paper that gets him a scholarship. The circumstances are damning, Greenfield refuses to give explanations and he is sent to Coventry (meaning that all the boys in the boarding school refuse to speak to him or acknowledge his existence). Even his friend Wraysford, who incidentally was the one who came in second place for the scholarship, believes he is guilty. Only his younger brother believes in his innocence:
If this is not too melodramatic for you and you liked the boarding school aspects of Harry Potter you may enjoy this tale. The story arc of the novel is complete and ultimately satisfactory. These British boarding school novels are mostly forgotten now, but the genre conventions created by Thomas Hughes and Frederic William Farrar, and polished and developed by Talbot Baines Reed, as well as by later writers like Anthony Buckeridge, Charles Hamilton (a.k.a. Frank Richards), Angela Brazil, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Enid Blyton and others, form the tradition that J. K. Rowling drew upon to create Hogwarts.
P. G. Wodehouse, who before becoming one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century also started as a writer of public school stories, called Talbot Baines Reed "the most successful of schoolboy writers, in that he wrote a great many stories, and all of them good, some infinitely better than others but none weak."
The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's is Talbot Baines Reed's second novel. It's his most famous novel, although he has a dozen others of similar quality, all of which can be downloaded for free at Project Gutenberg, being out of copyright.
Following in the tradition and conventions started by Thomas Hughes in his very successful "Tom Brown's School Days" (1857), Talbot Baines Reed was nevertheless a different kind of writer. He also wrote for boys, but he was not a moralizer like Hughes, at least not in such an explicit way. His stories, even though the setting is so old-fashioned for modern readers, nevertheless are easy and pleasant to read and very entertaining. He told well-plotted stories and his characters were not one-dimensional. His heroes were not perfect and his villains had some redeeming qualities. In this novel, for example, Edward Loman is one of the two main villains, but despicable as he gets throughout the story, he is not evil. When young Stephen Greenfield becomes his fag (new boys were expected to do menial tasks for a senior boy, who in exchange became their mentor when needed), Loman treats him decently, at least before his gradual corruption, for he doesn't really have the inclinations of a bully. He is a boy with good qualities and some character weaknesses, and it's those flaws that gradually get him in an spiral of dishonesty, further corrupting him until he is -almost- beyond redemption.
British Public schools were quite remarkable institutions. Sometimes they seemed more interested in moulding their pupil's characters than in imparting knowledge. They wanted to form leaders (Britain was a great empire at the time) and thus gave senior boys a surprising amount of freedom and authority over their juniors. Some senior boys (the prefects or monitors) are in charge of keeping order and they are expected to exercise their power in an honorable manner. Masters only intervene if things get out of hand. These schools were capable of inspiring very strong loyalty in many of their pupils, and for others, less suited to their "muscular Christianity" brand of education, they were a miserable experience. We only see the good side of them in these idealized stories. They are tales of schoolboy honor, loyalty and friendship, and can also get dramatic in the problems the young heroes go through in these closed societies.
This book is about the downfall of two senior boys, one undeserved (Oliver Greenfield's) and one well-deserved (Edwards Loman's). Ultimately, it's an optimistic story, so it's also a tale of redemption.
The story starts with the arrival at school of Stephen Greenfield, eleven years old and younger brother of Oliver Greenfield. We share his puzzlement and insecurities as he tries to fit in in the well-regimented society of the school as a new boy. As a form of good-natured hazing by senior boys he is made to think that he has to write a paper and present it to the headmaster, answering a list of impossible questions that, young Stephen fears, will expose his ignorance and unsuitability to be in the school. He also has to find his place among the two informal clubs or fraternities that divide the younger boys: you have to be either a Tadpole or a Guinea-Pig, but you do not get to choose. The two groups draw lots for you, and thus young Stephen joins the proud institution of Guinea-Pigdom. The younger boys (the Junior Fourth Form) are a lot of fun. High-spirited, foolish, boisterous and eager to sign up for any riot, Tadpoles and Guinea-Pigs are fierce rivals but are always ready to join forces against a common enemy at any injustice, real or perceived, from senior boys.
But the real main characters are two Fifth-Form friends, Oliver Greenfield (Stephen's older brother) and Horace Wraysford. We follow their adventures and the story of the rivalry between the Fifth Form and the Sixth Form. There are cricket and rugby matches, both intra-school and against outside rivals, given disproportionate importance by the boys. There is also the satirical paper that the Fifth-Form boys produce, very wittily ridiculing the Sixth Form and also the Tadpoles and Guinea-Pigs. We also see how Wraysford saves young Stephen's life in a boating accident during the holidays.
The situation gets more dramatic when Loman gets in debt with a disreputable character in town, and when Oliver Greenfield is suspected of stealing an exam paper that gets him a scholarship. The circumstances are damning, Greenfield refuses to give explanations and he is sent to Coventry (meaning that all the boys in the boarding school refuse to speak to him or acknowledge his existence). Even his friend Wraysford, who incidentally was the one who came in second place for the scholarship, believes he is guilty. Only his younger brother believes in his innocence:
One boy, of course, stuck to the exile through thick and thin. If Oliver had murdered all Saint Dominic’s with slow poison, Stephen would have stuck to him to the end, and he stuck to him now. He, at least, never once admitted that his brother was guilty. When slowly he first discovered what were the suspicions of the Fifth, and what was the common talk of the school about Oliver, the small boy’s indignation was past description. He rushed to his brother.
“Do you hear the lies the fellows are telling about you, Noll?”
“Yes,” said Oliver.
“Why don’t you stop it, and tell them?”
“What’s the use? I’ve told them once. If they don’t choose to believe it, they needn’t.”
Any other boy would, of course, have taken this as clear evidence of the elder brother’s guilt; but it only strengthened the small boy’s indignation.
“I’ll let them know, if you won’t!” and forthwith he went and proceeded to make himself a perfect nuisance in the school. He began with Wraysford.
“I say, Wray,” he demanded, “do you hear all the lies the fellows are telling about Noll?”
“Don’t make a row now,” said Wraysford, shortly. “I’m busy.” But Stephen had no notion of being put down.
“The fellows say he stole an exam paper, the blackguards! I’d like to punch all their heads, and I will too!”
“Clear out of my study, now,” said Wraysford, sharply.
Stephen stared at him a moment. Then his face grew pale as he grasped the meaning of it all.
“I say, Wray, surely you don’t believe it?” he cried.
“Go away now,” was Wraysford’s only answer.
But this did not suit Stephen, his blood was up, and he meant to have it out.
“Surely you don’t believe it?” he repeated, disregarding the impatience of the other; “you aren’t a blackguard, like the rest?”
“Do you hear what I tell you?” said Wraysford.
“No, and I don’t mean to!” retorted the irate Stephen. “If you were anything of a friend you’d stand up for Oliver. You’re a beast, Wraysford, that’s what you are!” continued he, in a passion. “You’re a blackguard! you’re a liar! I could kill you!”
And the poor boy, wild with rage and misery, actually flung himself blindly upon his brother’s old friend—the saviour of his own life.
Wraysford was not angry. There was more of pity in his face than anger as he took the small boy by the arm and led him to the door. Stephen no longer resisted. After giving vent to the first flood of his anger, misery got the upper hand of him, and he longed to go anywhere to hide it. He could have endured to know that Oliver was suspected by a good many of the fellows, but to find Wraysford among them was a cruel blow.
If this is not too melodramatic for you and you liked the boarding school aspects of Harry Potter you may enjoy this tale. The story arc of the novel is complete and ultimately satisfactory. These British boarding school novels are mostly forgotten now, but the genre conventions created by Thomas Hughes and Frederic William Farrar, and polished and developed by Talbot Baines Reed, as well as by later writers like Anthony Buckeridge, Charles Hamilton (a.k.a. Frank Richards), Angela Brazil, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Enid Blyton and others, form the tradition that J. K. Rowling drew upon to create Hogwarts.
December 24, 2017
The boarding school novel has a weird appeal to me. This is an oldie, and from what I gather, very popular in it's day. And it was fun. What a strange world these boys inhabited. I wanted nothing more than to go to boarding school when I was a kid, and this book would only have reinforced that wish.
October 7, 2021
If you enjoy old time school stories, you’ll love this one. Young Stephen Greenfield leaves home and mother to embark on his first solo journey: to St. Dominics, where his elder brother Oliver is a Fifth former. Much to his relief, the journey goes smoothly, and arriving at Maltby Station, he is met by Oliver, but in a few moments is handed over to another senior to be escorted to the school. Of course, his arrival as a new boy attracts all kinds of mild ragging and trips to the village and back, till he finally settles in. Juniors at St. Domincs have to fag for senior boys, as readers of (Blyton’s St. Claire’s series) will remember, lighting fires, making breakfast, cleaning boots and running errands in return for some help with their homework. Stephan hopes to fag for his brother’s best friend Wraysford, but lands up with Loman, a comparative newcomer himself, and not the most popular of boys. Over the weeks, Stephen makes both friends and friendly enemies in his own form, accompanies Loman on a boat trip where he meets the Lockkeeper Jeff and his son Cripps, who owns a pub in the village, is done out of most of his pocket money by the crooked pair, because of his innocence and soft heart. While Stephen does get into trouble, he has his big brother to rescue him, but Loman also falls into a similar trap and has no one to turn to. School life with classes, homework, and exams interspersed with the most exciting cricket and football matches, the publication of the Fifth Form newspaper “The Dominican”, the boisterous squabbles between the Guinea-pigs and the Tadpoles (Fourth Form groups), the rivalry between the Fifth and Sixth Form, and finally the Scholarship exams and an unexpected fallout, which changes life at St. Dominics, altogether. There are many funny episodes too, the most hilarious being the Concert put up by the Fourth Form, which will have the reader in stitches. Sadly, this is a standalone book. I would have loved to read more of St. Dominics.
June 6, 2009
These things are so difficult to rate. Reed was not as brilliant as Wodehouse or Kipling, yet this book was (as near as I can figure) more popular as a boarding school novel than either of their works, and did more to shape the subgenre.
The elements are all there, including the noble sacrifice, the UT friendships and rivalries, the layers of secret language marking circles and hierarchy. Not nearly as slashy as E. F. Benson (that would be difficult to match) or Hugh Walpole's delicate sentimentality, but whoa, it's there.
The elements are all there, including the noble sacrifice, the UT friendships and rivalries, the layers of secret language marking circles and hierarchy. Not nearly as slashy as E. F. Benson (that would be difficult to match) or Hugh Walpole's delicate sentimentality, but whoa, it's there.
June 7, 2017
I have a real liking for school stories. Baines was one of the first, if not the first, of the golden age of school stories. It's tempting to say the book is full of cliches, but then Baines was establishing the cliches. There is a strong, but reasonably subtle, muscular Christian message which may put some readers off, for me it adds to the charm. Top class, Victorian school novel, first serialised in the BOP in the early 1880s but fresh and surprisingly sophisticated.
August 12, 2022
Just read it again, for like the fifth time XD.
It's just such a comforting book and I love it so much.
It's so wholesome but not over the top as are most of the others in the genre.
Oliver is a very real character, but amazing. He's so decent. (Though I think if I knew him in real life I would be rather annoyed with him a lot of the time.)
Stephen is adorable, and Loman is very sad, poor stupid boy.
Anyway, all this to say this is a favourite of mine which I frequently reread.
It's just such a comforting book and I love it so much.
It's so wholesome but not over the top as are most of the others in the genre.
Oliver is a very real character, but amazing. He's so decent. (Though I think if I knew him in real life I would be rather annoyed with him a lot of the time.)
Stephen is adorable, and Loman is very sad, poor stupid boy.
Anyway, all this to say this is a favourite of mine which I frequently reread.
July 26, 2021
Chronicles a year in the life of Oliver Greenfield (a member of the fifth form at St. Dominic's school), a couple of his friends (also in the fifth form), his younger brother (Stephen, who is working his way through his first year at the school and who is a member of the Fourth Junior class), and a boy in the sixth form, Loman. We follow them through various scrapes - both actual and metaphorical - and their triumphs as well.
I generally don't love British boarding school stories, but this one surprised me. The characters are instantly likable (or, in a couple of instances, instantly detestable in the best way), the plot is engaging and fun (there's an interesting mystery that's not easy to solve and gets resolved in a very satisfactory way), and the pacing is good. Definitely recommended, if you like this sort of thing.
I generally don't love British boarding school stories, but this one surprised me. The characters are instantly likable (or, in a couple of instances, instantly detestable in the best way), the plot is engaging and fun (there's an interesting mystery that's not easy to solve and gets resolved in a very satisfactory way), and the pacing is good. Definitely recommended, if you like this sort of thing.
September 23, 2012
This book makes for extremely easy reading, as one might expect, given the originally intended reasdership. It is about adventures and drama in a major English Public School towards the end of the nineteenth Century.
These reminiscences in the form of a novel belonging to the genre of school literature (someone in Goddreads named it "subgenre", I do not know what the "subgenre" is to which this book apparently belongs) I found thoroughly enjoyable but instructive at the same time. The story offers a view of school life for the "lucky few" in upper class late Victorian society and it is fascinating to see what has changed and not changed over a hundred years. As we cannot go back in a time machine, one way of learning how people spoke and felt a given time in the past is to read the literature of that time. In comparison to the impression which journalists and social commentators often try to give, the school boys had a fair amount of freedom at school, in some respects more than today. The notion of honour, a word which has signifcantly fallen into wide dissuse, is very high among the boys. Some things haven't changed-the slackers and goodgoodies, the poet wannabies and the sports fanatics (although nearly everyone seems to have loved sport in those schools). Boys go off the rails (to use an expression which I am sure would have been familiar to the writer of this tale) and mishave, challenge authority and strike and riot, but there is a complete lack in this story of an engrained hostility to the principle of order. The writer himself is a believing Christian, not a prosletyser but hsi faith underlies the moral impetus of the tale and this is, for all the fun and games, very much a morality tale. Central to the book is the decline and fall of one boy and later (the readers are expected to hope and believe) his repentance and salvation. The notion of "special friendships" is hinted at in the vaguest possible way and is anyway intended to be understood as not carnal and therefore not sinful. The Victorians after all, believed in passionmate friendships between persons of different ages and/or the same sex, which so long as they were not carnal, were not widely condemned. One only has to consider how distrustful modern critics are about say "Peter Pan" or "Alice in Wonderland" compared to critics of fifty or more years ago. At such "innocence" modern journalists like to sneer. Having said that the writer is cryptic about certain aspects of school life which I feel must have played an important role: illness, sexuality, bullying. Bullying plays a key role in Tom Brwon's School Days, written about forty years previously. Has bullyying disappeared since then? Much of what we might consider bullying today might have been dismissed as "ragging" then. Children of those days come acorss as more honourable a than children of today. Another most important difference between then and now seems to be in the respect which another generation and another time held towards the social whole, and to authority. Authority was opposed and fought against at times but never is its deepest legitimacy challenged. It never enters anyone's head that girls should attend the school. That and scores of other reasons would bring government inspectors down on the old school en masse if it were transported to today and poor St. Dominic's would be closed down immediately by ministerial edict for a hundred infringments of a hundred codes and rules in the "free", and "democratic" society into which our children are educated in the twenty-first century, with the happy results of which no one can be ignorant.
A small point worth noting is about the language. In some ways it surprises me that language alters little through time. There are few archaic words or turns of phrase which a literate person today should be expected to find difficullt.
I am unsure to what extent St. Dominic's School, or rather the model from which it was taken, which was undoubtedly Talbot Baines Reed's own school (Talbot Baines Reed-the very name is splendidly Victorian!), really was as he depicts it, and to what extent he saw it through rose-tinted spectacles because he was himself happy at the school from which he drew the material for "Fifth Form at St Dominic's" and to that extent he is intentionally concealing what he considers unsuitable for his story, for example cruel treatment or inefective teaching. A slightly surprising scene in the book shows that the admired headmaster has a very unsatsisfactory relationship with his son, who is portrayed in an extremely negative way: in the only chapter in which he appears he comes across as apathetic, cowardly and stupid. This is surprising because the main thrust of the book seems to me to be optimistic and one would expect that the headmaster's son would be presented as a model. However, the writer does not explore this line, which might have struck him as out of tune with his own auspicious view of youth and the future.
This book is one I can recommend to anyone who enjoys books about closed institutions or nostalgic accounts of a world where young people still believed that there was something worth fighting and sacrificing for and where they have the guts to own up and confess, "I am ashamed, I was wrong."
These reminiscences in the form of a novel belonging to the genre of school literature (someone in Goddreads named it "subgenre", I do not know what the "subgenre" is to which this book apparently belongs) I found thoroughly enjoyable but instructive at the same time. The story offers a view of school life for the "lucky few" in upper class late Victorian society and it is fascinating to see what has changed and not changed over a hundred years. As we cannot go back in a time machine, one way of learning how people spoke and felt a given time in the past is to read the literature of that time. In comparison to the impression which journalists and social commentators often try to give, the school boys had a fair amount of freedom at school, in some respects more than today. The notion of honour, a word which has signifcantly fallen into wide dissuse, is very high among the boys. Some things haven't changed-the slackers and goodgoodies, the poet wannabies and the sports fanatics (although nearly everyone seems to have loved sport in those schools). Boys go off the rails (to use an expression which I am sure would have been familiar to the writer of this tale) and mishave, challenge authority and strike and riot, but there is a complete lack in this story of an engrained hostility to the principle of order. The writer himself is a believing Christian, not a prosletyser but hsi faith underlies the moral impetus of the tale and this is, for all the fun and games, very much a morality tale. Central to the book is the decline and fall of one boy and later (the readers are expected to hope and believe) his repentance and salvation. The notion of "special friendships" is hinted at in the vaguest possible way and is anyway intended to be understood as not carnal and therefore not sinful. The Victorians after all, believed in passionmate friendships between persons of different ages and/or the same sex, which so long as they were not carnal, were not widely condemned. One only has to consider how distrustful modern critics are about say "Peter Pan" or "Alice in Wonderland" compared to critics of fifty or more years ago. At such "innocence" modern journalists like to sneer. Having said that the writer is cryptic about certain aspects of school life which I feel must have played an important role: illness, sexuality, bullying. Bullying plays a key role in Tom Brwon's School Days, written about forty years previously. Has bullyying disappeared since then? Much of what we might consider bullying today might have been dismissed as "ragging" then. Children of those days come acorss as more honourable a than children of today. Another most important difference between then and now seems to be in the respect which another generation and another time held towards the social whole, and to authority. Authority was opposed and fought against at times but never is its deepest legitimacy challenged. It never enters anyone's head that girls should attend the school. That and scores of other reasons would bring government inspectors down on the old school en masse if it were transported to today and poor St. Dominic's would be closed down immediately by ministerial edict for a hundred infringments of a hundred codes and rules in the "free", and "democratic" society into which our children are educated in the twenty-first century, with the happy results of which no one can be ignorant.
A small point worth noting is about the language. In some ways it surprises me that language alters little through time. There are few archaic words or turns of phrase which a literate person today should be expected to find difficullt.
I am unsure to what extent St. Dominic's School, or rather the model from which it was taken, which was undoubtedly Talbot Baines Reed's own school (Talbot Baines Reed-the very name is splendidly Victorian!), really was as he depicts it, and to what extent he saw it through rose-tinted spectacles because he was himself happy at the school from which he drew the material for "Fifth Form at St Dominic's" and to that extent he is intentionally concealing what he considers unsuitable for his story, for example cruel treatment or inefective teaching. A slightly surprising scene in the book shows that the admired headmaster has a very unsatsisfactory relationship with his son, who is portrayed in an extremely negative way: in the only chapter in which he appears he comes across as apathetic, cowardly and stupid. This is surprising because the main thrust of the book seems to me to be optimistic and one would expect that the headmaster's son would be presented as a model. However, the writer does not explore this line, which might have struck him as out of tune with his own auspicious view of youth and the future.
This book is one I can recommend to anyone who enjoys books about closed institutions or nostalgic accounts of a world where young people still believed that there was something worth fighting and sacrificing for and where they have the guts to own up and confess, "I am ashamed, I was wrong."
October 30, 2025
Talbot Baines Reed #1
Dating back to 1881 and set in an English boarding school, this was a story read to myself and my siblings when I was a child, over a period of time, later on I remember thinking about it but could not recall the name, neither could my mother, I remembered the bare bones of the plot and the lead character Oliver Greenfield's name.
Anyway I put the details on a website and some cove was able to come up with the name, and I purchased it, read it and gave it to my mother, who was most delighted and read it as well.
Well after she died late last year, I have been going through her books and here it was, and so I read it again, and it is a fine read, filled with all the things you would expect from this kind of yarn, but at its core it is a story of redemption and forgiveness and is a wonderfully told story that is edging towards one hundred and fifty years old and still is very much worth reading.
Dating back to 1881 and set in an English boarding school, this was a story read to myself and my siblings when I was a child, over a period of time, later on I remember thinking about it but could not recall the name, neither could my mother, I remembered the bare bones of the plot and the lead character Oliver Greenfield's name.
Anyway I put the details on a website and some cove was able to come up with the name, and I purchased it, read it and gave it to my mother, who was most delighted and read it as well.
Well after she died late last year, I have been going through her books and here it was, and so I read it again, and it is a fine read, filled with all the things you would expect from this kind of yarn, but at its core it is a story of redemption and forgiveness and is a wonderfully told story that is edging towards one hundred and fifty years old and still is very much worth reading.
October 8, 2020
I really enjoyed this book. I discovered Talbot Baines Reid when I read Follow My Leader, then enjoyed The Adventures of a Three Guinea Watch. I had hear that The Fifth Form at St. Dominic’s was TBR’s most popular book, so I read it next. I’m well past the target age for YA fiction, especially YA fiction written in the 1880’s, but I still enjoy a good story, with actual human heroes to root for. This was one such book, which proved to be inspirational and reinforces good values. Very enjoyable to read and very well written. I am so glad I stumbled upon TBR and his legacy of books.
January 12, 2020
It’s not David Blaize but it’s fun.
July 22, 2024
I thought that I would just be pleasantly amused, at best. Bored a lot, at worst. But this was wonderful.
I was inspired by the early novels, and stories, of P. G. Wodehouse. The inspiration to do one more ‘Boys’ School’ novel, not by Wodehouse this time so as to see how someone else does it, did come late to me. It was years ago that I read The Pothunters by Wodehouse - as well as A Prefect’s Uncle, The Head of Kay’s - and I remember loving most of that stuff much more than I thought I would. A bit too much Cricket for my taste - I don’t know Cricket, except for a few basics - but there was no way there was not going to be Cricket in English Boys’ Boarding School tales, so I just tried to focus whenever the young fellas went out to play their beloved game so I could always tell who won, which characters did well, and who let the side down (usually due to being preoccupied with some distressing plot-line occurring in the story, not directly tied to Cricket, but definitely detrimental to peak performance). Overall, my experiences with the Wodehouse contributions to this once-popular subgenre were surprisingly satisfying; his style, wit, plotting and pacing, were already on display and running rampant. Personally, I could see Code of the Woosters lurking in the future of the writer of these charming novels for boys.
But I didn’t rush out and get a bunch of similar books by a variety of forgotten authors. For one thing, I didn’t know any relevant author names. But not too long ago, I read Benny Green’s literary biography of the Master, and Green generously gave me some names. Authors and book titles. I added to my TBR list. I ignored those additions for a while, and then recently, flipping through my TBR list, I put The Fifth Form of St. Dominic’s on order. Weirdly, when it came, I wanted to read it right away! But I did brace myself for something dusty and perhaps frivolous. Kids and hijinks, maybe care of a pet frog taking up many chapters, a young troublemaker writhing in Detention in some kind of running gag running out of steam. Trips to the candy store, letters home to parents. One big schoolyard fight, one boy learns an important spiritual lesson…and school’s out. That’s what I expected, nothing too rigorous, nothing very meaningful or affecting.
Sure, I was stuck in school. That happened. But all the various plot lines, spread out among several boys of the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourth Forms - just enough well-drawn main and supporting characters to explore several facets of school life among friends, rivals, and enemies-for-a-year - are keenly compelling. At least, I found them so; I thought the whole trip through the school year, starring Steve and older brother Oliver, was at turns joyful to behold, or at times heart-breaking and veering towards tragedy. A despicable grown-up named Cripps - not affiliated with the school, but out in the ‘real world’ and yet close enough to St. Dominic’s to be a bad influence - is a great villain, and also the most likely reason any one of these boys might fall from youthful innocence to ruined-childhood tragedy. An apparent case of cheating also suggests someone is not worthy of St. Dominic’s…but which boy? The obvious suspect, who is suddenly shunned and virtually friendless?
The book is about honour and honesty, bravery and integrity, choices and debts. It’s also about learning of the Cripps of the world, learning the hard way. Big themes, but not obnoxiously hammered home. We’re not building a Luke Skywalker, here - and Cripps is wonderfully so not wonderful, but he’s no Darth Vader. Just a small manipulative bully looking for smaller prey. And just so all of it doesn’t get too high-handed and serious, too Earth-shaking for one little school, there are wrestling matches on the stairs, childish practical jokes, spontaneous immature insult round-robins, holiday visits with family, school newspaper complications, crying over small things in private so as not to be persecuted, and getting in trouble and writing a hundred lines. Overall, the 1881 version of budding nerds, and budding jocks.
But into this charmingly rendered look at bygone school life, occasionally big stakes events intrude. The light and the heavy, I enjoyed the whole year. Among books set at school, I put this with Miss Pym Disposes, The Blackboard Jungle (which a re-read would probably bring down), School For Scumbags, and even the stuff it’s closest to: the Wodehouse Boys’ School adventures.
I was inspired by the early novels, and stories, of P. G. Wodehouse. The inspiration to do one more ‘Boys’ School’ novel, not by Wodehouse this time so as to see how someone else does it, did come late to me. It was years ago that I read The Pothunters by Wodehouse - as well as A Prefect’s Uncle, The Head of Kay’s - and I remember loving most of that stuff much more than I thought I would. A bit too much Cricket for my taste - I don’t know Cricket, except for a few basics - but there was no way there was not going to be Cricket in English Boys’ Boarding School tales, so I just tried to focus whenever the young fellas went out to play their beloved game so I could always tell who won, which characters did well, and who let the side down (usually due to being preoccupied with some distressing plot-line occurring in the story, not directly tied to Cricket, but definitely detrimental to peak performance). Overall, my experiences with the Wodehouse contributions to this once-popular subgenre were surprisingly satisfying; his style, wit, plotting and pacing, were already on display and running rampant. Personally, I could see Code of the Woosters lurking in the future of the writer of these charming novels for boys.
But I didn’t rush out and get a bunch of similar books by a variety of forgotten authors. For one thing, I didn’t know any relevant author names. But not too long ago, I read Benny Green’s literary biography of the Master, and Green generously gave me some names. Authors and book titles. I added to my TBR list. I ignored those additions for a while, and then recently, flipping through my TBR list, I put The Fifth Form of St. Dominic’s on order. Weirdly, when it came, I wanted to read it right away! But I did brace myself for something dusty and perhaps frivolous. Kids and hijinks, maybe care of a pet frog taking up many chapters, a young troublemaker writhing in Detention in some kind of running gag running out of steam. Trips to the candy store, letters home to parents. One big schoolyard fight, one boy learns an important spiritual lesson…and school’s out. That’s what I expected, nothing too rigorous, nothing very meaningful or affecting.
Sure, I was stuck in school. That happened. But all the various plot lines, spread out among several boys of the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourth Forms - just enough well-drawn main and supporting characters to explore several facets of school life among friends, rivals, and enemies-for-a-year - are keenly compelling. At least, I found them so; I thought the whole trip through the school year, starring Steve and older brother Oliver, was at turns joyful to behold, or at times heart-breaking and veering towards tragedy. A despicable grown-up named Cripps - not affiliated with the school, but out in the ‘real world’ and yet close enough to St. Dominic’s to be a bad influence - is a great villain, and also the most likely reason any one of these boys might fall from youthful innocence to ruined-childhood tragedy. An apparent case of cheating also suggests someone is not worthy of St. Dominic’s…but which boy? The obvious suspect, who is suddenly shunned and virtually friendless?
The book is about honour and honesty, bravery and integrity, choices and debts. It’s also about learning of the Cripps of the world, learning the hard way. Big themes, but not obnoxiously hammered home. We’re not building a Luke Skywalker, here - and Cripps is wonderfully so not wonderful, but he’s no Darth Vader. Just a small manipulative bully looking for smaller prey. And just so all of it doesn’t get too high-handed and serious, too Earth-shaking for one little school, there are wrestling matches on the stairs, childish practical jokes, spontaneous immature insult round-robins, holiday visits with family, school newspaper complications, crying over small things in private so as not to be persecuted, and getting in trouble and writing a hundred lines. Overall, the 1881 version of budding nerds, and budding jocks.
But into this charmingly rendered look at bygone school life, occasionally big stakes events intrude. The light and the heavy, I enjoyed the whole year. Among books set at school, I put this with Miss Pym Disposes, The Blackboard Jungle (which a re-read would probably bring down), School For Scumbags, and even the stuff it’s closest to: the Wodehouse Boys’ School adventures.
June 7, 2013
Much like Tom Brown's Schooldays this book includes a variety of stories experience by a group of school children during their time growing up in a British Public school during the 19th Century. It was written for a magazine originally and the stories read like this, but this in no way works against them as they're combined into this one book. Took a chapter to get into the lyrical and classic language, but once achieved I really enjoyed this book. One I'd recommend to my children as an introduction to writers of the era.
July 27, 2016
A wonderful; story, exactly of its time! I strongly reccommend this book to lovers of BOP and other fiction of this era!
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