Book of the Month: Howard Baker

 This entry is not so much the Book of the Month as Books (plural) since Gunmen at Greyfriars here represents the prolific output of the publisher Howard Baker.

Howard Baker published more than a hundred volumes of reprints from boys’ story papers originally published in the 1920s and 1930s. Many concentrated on the work of author Frank Richards and his Billy Bunter, stories that appeared in the Magnet.

In its own publicity Howard Baker says:

‘Each of the Howard Baker editions contains a complete series of stories from the Magnet’s great golden age. And each is a fitting memorial to the glowing imagination, the humour and humanity and the well-nigh incredible industry of its brilliant author.’

It goes on:

‘The brilliant character studies of boys and masters created by Frank Richards ensured his own immortality. Apart from the boys at Greyfriars, not forgetting Horace Coker, the duffer of the Fifth, there was the unforgettable Mr. Quelch, the Remove form-master (“a beast, but a just beast”), the Rev. Dr. Locke, venerable Headmaster of the School, William Gosling, the crusty, elbow-bending school porter who firmly believed that “all boys should be drownded at birth”, Paul Pontifex-Prout, the pompous form-master of the Fifth, the excitable but kind-hearted “Mossoo” (M’sieu Charpenter, French master), the odious Cecil Ponsonby, involved in murky goings-on at The Three Fishers, and peppery Sir Hilton Popper, irascible School Governor. All these characters and many, many more are to be found in the pages of these volumes.’

Here's an extract from the story Gun Play at Greyfriars that appears in volume 45 of Howard Baker’s collection. It was originally published in the Magnet of 2 May 1936 (also available on the Friardale website here.)

For more on Howard Baker, click here.

For more Billy Bunter, click here

 

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