Loyal to the School

Angela BrazilProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 356K words
Chapters: 36

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Loyal to the School by Angela BrazilAuthor: Brazil, Angela, 1869-1947,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Apr 22, 2010

Editor's review

Loyal to the School is a school story by the British children's author Angela Brazil, a typical example of the boarding-school genre. Brazil wrote prolifically about girls' boarding schools and was skilled at portraying friendship, rivalry, a sense of honour and the growing pains of school life. Centred on the theme of loyalty to the school, the book uses everyday interactions and conflicts among the pupils to show how young people understand and uphold a sense of belonging to the group. As an early twentieth-century children's book, its language is fairly traditional and the plot moves forward mainly through details of school life at a relatively leisurely pace. This Project Gutenberg edition offers readers free access to a classic of English children's literature. It will appeal to readers interested in the tradition of the British school story, and also works as light reading for English learners encountering early twentieth-century narrative style. Readers might note the school ethics reflected in the book and compare them with contemporary narratives of growing up.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in British boarding-school children's literature
Literature lovers curious about early twentieth-century English children's fiction
Learners with intermediate English who want light fiction for reading practice
Parents or educators interested in school ethics and young people's sense of collective belonging

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer fast-paced modern genre fiction with strong conflict
Beginners with weak English who find early English narrative style difficult
Adult readers expecting deep social critique or complex psychological portraiture

Reading tips

Read a chapter first to get a feel for the rhythm; if it seems hard, use a dictionary or a bilingual edition.
Note how different pupils understand 'loyalty' and sketch a map of the characters' relationships.
Read it alongside contemporary school stories to observe how school narratives have changed.
For extensive reading, read one or two chapters a day and keep going; there is no need to look up every word.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What English level is this book suitable for?

This is an early twentieth-century English children's novel with fairly traditional sentence patterns; the vocabulary is not obscure, but the narrative moves slowly. It suits learners with intermediate reading ability who can get through a long book with a dictionary; readers with weak English are advised to choose a bilingual or annotated edition.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg was an early provider of free ebooks. This is its public-domain electronic edition, in English and classified as children's literature. It is easy to obtain free and read on electronic devices, but it usually has no modern introduction or notes, so readers must work out the background themselves.

How does this book relate to the author's other school stories?

Angela Brazil is known for her girls' boarding-school stories, and this book belongs to the same vein, with themes of school loyalty and communal life. It can be read alongside her other school stories to understand the shared style and character types of her school world.

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About the author

Angela Brazil Author · British · 1869–1947

Angela Brazil (1869–1947) was a British children's author and is regarded as one of the pioneers of the modern girls' boarding-school story. She published her first work in 1904 and went on to publish nearly fifty schoolgirl novels over her lifetime; twenty-seven of her works are held in this collection, including A Fourth Form Friendship, The Fortunes of Philippa, Bosom Friends, A Pair of Schoolgirls, For the Sake of the School, A Fortunate Term, The Nicest Girl in the School and A Patriotic Schoolgirl. Her stories are mostly set in girls' boarding schools and centre on friendship, rivalry, communal life and growing up among classmates. Her brisk, lively style and attention to her heroines' personalities and everyday school life made her popular with young readers until the mid-twentieth century. Public information on her early education and private life is limited, and her literary contribution lies chiefly in opening up the school-story genre and in her sustained output. She died in Coventry in 1947.