Novels

Novels, Education in Popular Culture

Many novels have some aspect of education as a theme or have a narrative that features teachers/learners or educational institutions in some significant way. To include ‘literature’ in thinking about ‘popular culture’, however, may seem inappropriate. This list appears here primarily because of the ubiquity of the paperback novel, and the fact that not all novels meet the criteria of ‘high culture’. There is also a sense in which literature, however defined, can both reflect and inform popular culture.
There is a very large genre of school based literature that is aimed specifically at children, well known examples include Enid Blyton’s /St. Clare’s/ and /Malory Towers/ series, Richmal Crompton’s /Just William/ stories and Anthony Buckeridge’s ‘Jennings’ series (set in a prep school). The Harry Potter phenomenon, (authored by J K Rowlings), presents a recent example of the commercial power and the pull of this type of literature on the collective imagination both in the UK and internationally. Paradoxically (perhaps), no attempt to list ‘children’s’ literature’ has been made here. This is partly owing to the vast number (and variable quality) of publications that fall into this category. The ‘campus novel’ is discussed in Showalter E (2005) /Faculty Towers: the Academic Novel and its Discontents/. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Any of the following may be of interest to those seeking light, and in some cases not so light reading, that has some bearing on education and/or schooling. Please note that the date shown in square brackets [e.g. 1934] is the date of original publication (so far as it has been possible to establish it) rather than the date of a current edition.