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regshoeI had high hopes of this book because it is a favourite of boy's boarding school story expert phantomtomato, and it did not disappoint. It's an excellent entry in the genre of Tom Brown's School Days, The Hill and Fathers of Men, and a new favourite of mine. However...
The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's (1881) follows the adventures of a varied school community, concentrating more or less on four main characters: sixteen-year-old Oliver Greenfield, our upstanding but by no means perfect example of public-school morality; Stephen Greenfield, Oliver's younger brother (he is either ten-going-on-eleven or twelve; the text contradicts itself when introducing him) and a new boy at the school, who is repeatedly and accurately described as 'very green'; Edward Loman, our example of a boy who, starting out decent but weak in character, takes a false step and proceeds down the broad road of Going Wrong; and Horace Wraysford, Oliver's slightly complicated BFF. Much of the plot is about rivalries between the different forms. Loman is in the Sixth, Oliver and Wraysford in the Fifth, and the Fifth and Sixth are established enemies; meanwhile the Fourth Junior, Stephen's form, is divided into two rival gangs very seriously called the Guinea-pigs and the Tadpoles. (Stephen becomes a Guinea-pig.) Other important characters include Anthony Pembury, the observant and sharp-penned fifth-form editor of a school newspaper in which he takes entertaining pot-shots at the Sixth and the Fourth Junior; and Mr Cripps, the rather hackneyed no-good member of the lower orders who leads Loman astray (into debt, gambling, drinking &c.).
Besides the characters, what I liked best about this book was the prose and narrative voice. Reed is the best kind of spirited Victorian narrator, both assured and lively in sentence construction and sometimes very funny. His style really reminded me of Tom Brown's School Days, even in little details—as with Arnold at Rugby, the head master character is usually referred to simply as the Doctor; Reed shares Hughes's habit of slipping into present tense at particularly exciting moments—and here perhaps we can see the development of the genre after Tom Brown kicked it off, but if Reed is a derivative Thomas Hughes imitator he is a very good and very entertaining one, and I think the characters here are more interesting than those of Tom Brown.
Which is illustrated in the central dramatic episode of the book. Oliver, Loman and Wraysford are competing in a scholarship examination, and the night before the exam, someone steals one of the question papers; Oliver does brilliantly in the exam, wins the scholarship and—due to an unfortunate coincidence of timing—is falsely believed by the entire rest of his form to have been the thief and hence to have won by cheating. (Of course the real culprit is the going-wrong Loman.) Two points about how this was handled I especially liked. Firstly, Oliver's attitude: he refuses actively to deny the accusation, does not protest his innocence or proudly defy the classmates who send him to Coventry, and instead retreats into a kind of quietly proud, cheerful emotional self-containedness which endeared him to me very much. (Relevant quote: 'Oliver always had been a queer fellow, and he now came out in a queerer light than ever.') Secondly, it's where Oliver/Wraysford gets really interesting as a 'slashy best friends' pairing. Wraysford does not stick loyally by his friend and staunchly maintain that He Would Never; he feels angsty and conflicted about it but—following the apparent evidence and confused by Oliver's own attitude—he believes Oliver to be guilty and remains sadly estranged from him until the truth finally becomes apparent. (Stephen, the loyal little brother, does stand by Oliver and leads the rest of the Guinea-pigs to do the same; they do have a really rather sweet sibling relationship.) The actual logistics of this plot are slightly improbable: the Doctor, having announced the fact of the theft to the school, subverts the attempted cheating by replacing the exam questions with new ones at the last minute—but for some reason doesn't tell anyone he did that, and, I mean, what did he expect would happen, they'd all forget about it and not naturally conclude that one of the three entrants, and probably the winner, achieved his result by cheating??
My favourite moment in the book follows on this. The truth does finally become apparent; Wraysford rushes back to Oliver in joyful remorse over his error, and there is an amazing passage in which Reed as good as tells the reader he will now tastefully pan away from their loving reunion to give them some privacy. I was thoroughly enjoying this, thinking, this isn't the slashiest boarding school book ever but it certainly has its moments...
...so it was a bit of a surprise to go to AO3 after finishing the book and discover that everyone else thinks the slashy pairing is Oliver/Loman, in a (if you'll pardon the pun) 'heated rivalry' sort of a way. I mean, I can see it—the final dramatic sequence at the end of the book is one with a lot of slashy potential, undoubtedly—but before that I didn't really get the sense of them as personal rivals in the way that's fun to turn into fraught hatesex or enemies-to-lovers, vs. them coming into conflict in ways that highlight and develop their individual issues and struggles. But perhaps I'm just blinkered by how cute Oliver/Wraysford is and made contrary by my indignation that there isn't any fic for them and I'm going to have to write it myself.
The other really notable thing about this book is how preachy and moralising it isn't. Even the author of the contemporary Preface of the edition on Gutenberg noticed this, so it evidently stood out even at the time! The book obviously has a pretty typical moralising agenda—Reed means to show us examples of how schoolboys should behave, the trials and struggles they face, how they can go wrong and how those who do go wrong can be redeemed, all in a very conventional public-school Christianity framework—but he lets those examples speak for themselves without banging on about it, and the ultimate effect is of an endearing kindness towards the characters and a refreshing palatability of message.
What else is there to say? The book contains the necessary detailed descriptions of games, including both cricket and something which is called 'football' but certainly isn't association football and seems to be more like rugby or perhaps American football. It also contains one of the more memorable depictions of exam stress I've seen in a school story. The system of form numbering at St Dominic's is even more confusing than typical for these settings, and the amount of oversight of the boys by authority alarmingly low, but perhaps that was normal for the 1870s. Although the level of ambient cruelty and mockery in the school culture is kind of distressingly high at points (especially near the beginning), the book is also genuinely very funny. I really recommend it.
Well, it's been a while since a book has inspired me to write that much! I am pleased. :)
phantomtomato, and it did not disappoint. It's an excellent entry in the genre of Tom Brown's School Days, The Hill and Fathers of Men, and a new favourite of mine. However...The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's (1881) follows the adventures of a varied school community, concentrating more or less on four main characters: sixteen-year-old Oliver Greenfield, our upstanding but by no means perfect example of public-school morality; Stephen Greenfield, Oliver's younger brother (he is either ten-going-on-eleven or twelve; the text contradicts itself when introducing him) and a new boy at the school, who is repeatedly and accurately described as 'very green'; Edward Loman, our example of a boy who, starting out decent but weak in character, takes a false step and proceeds down the broad road of Going Wrong; and Horace Wraysford, Oliver's slightly complicated BFF. Much of the plot is about rivalries between the different forms. Loman is in the Sixth, Oliver and Wraysford in the Fifth, and the Fifth and Sixth are established enemies; meanwhile the Fourth Junior, Stephen's form, is divided into two rival gangs very seriously called the Guinea-pigs and the Tadpoles. (Stephen becomes a Guinea-pig.) Other important characters include Anthony Pembury, the observant and sharp-penned fifth-form editor of a school newspaper in which he takes entertaining pot-shots at the Sixth and the Fourth Junior; and Mr Cripps, the rather hackneyed no-good member of the lower orders who leads Loman astray (into debt, gambling, drinking &c.).
Besides the characters, what I liked best about this book was the prose and narrative voice. Reed is the best kind of spirited Victorian narrator, both assured and lively in sentence construction and sometimes very funny. His style really reminded me of Tom Brown's School Days, even in little details—as with Arnold at Rugby, the head master character is usually referred to simply as the Doctor; Reed shares Hughes's habit of slipping into present tense at particularly exciting moments—and here perhaps we can see the development of the genre after Tom Brown kicked it off, but if Reed is a derivative Thomas Hughes imitator he is a very good and very entertaining one, and I think the characters here are more interesting than those of Tom Brown.
Which is illustrated in the central dramatic episode of the book. Oliver, Loman and Wraysford are competing in a scholarship examination, and the night before the exam, someone steals one of the question papers; Oliver does brilliantly in the exam, wins the scholarship and—due to an unfortunate coincidence of timing—is falsely believed by the entire rest of his form to have been the thief and hence to have won by cheating. (Of course the real culprit is the going-wrong Loman.) Two points about how this was handled I especially liked. Firstly, Oliver's attitude: he refuses actively to deny the accusation, does not protest his innocence or proudly defy the classmates who send him to Coventry, and instead retreats into a kind of quietly proud, cheerful emotional self-containedness which endeared him to me very much. (Relevant quote: 'Oliver always had been a queer fellow, and he now came out in a queerer light than ever.') Secondly, it's where Oliver/Wraysford gets really interesting as a 'slashy best friends' pairing. Wraysford does not stick loyally by his friend and staunchly maintain that He Would Never; he feels angsty and conflicted about it but—following the apparent evidence and confused by Oliver's own attitude—he believes Oliver to be guilty and remains sadly estranged from him until the truth finally becomes apparent. (Stephen, the loyal little brother, does stand by Oliver and leads the rest of the Guinea-pigs to do the same; they do have a really rather sweet sibling relationship.) The actual logistics of this plot are slightly improbable: the Doctor, having announced the fact of the theft to the school, subverts the attempted cheating by replacing the exam questions with new ones at the last minute—but for some reason doesn't tell anyone he did that, and, I mean, what did he expect would happen, they'd all forget about it and not naturally conclude that one of the three entrants, and probably the winner, achieved his result by cheating??
My favourite moment in the book follows on this. The truth does finally become apparent; Wraysford rushes back to Oliver in joyful remorse over his error, and there is an amazing passage in which Reed as good as tells the reader he will now tastefully pan away from their loving reunion to give them some privacy. I was thoroughly enjoying this, thinking, this isn't the slashiest boarding school book ever but it certainly has its moments...
...so it was a bit of a surprise to go to AO3 after finishing the book and discover that everyone else thinks the slashy pairing is Oliver/Loman, in a (if you'll pardon the pun) 'heated rivalry' sort of a way. I mean, I can see it—the final dramatic sequence at the end of the book is one with a lot of slashy potential, undoubtedly—but before that I didn't really get the sense of them as personal rivals in the way that's fun to turn into fraught hatesex or enemies-to-lovers, vs. them coming into conflict in ways that highlight and develop their individual issues and struggles. But perhaps I'm just blinkered by how cute Oliver/Wraysford is and made contrary by my indignation that there isn't any fic for them and I'm going to have to write it myself.
The other really notable thing about this book is how preachy and moralising it isn't. Even the author of the contemporary Preface of the edition on Gutenberg noticed this, so it evidently stood out even at the time! The book obviously has a pretty typical moralising agenda—Reed means to show us examples of how schoolboys should behave, the trials and struggles they face, how they can go wrong and how those who do go wrong can be redeemed, all in a very conventional public-school Christianity framework—but he lets those examples speak for themselves without banging on about it, and the ultimate effect is of an endearing kindness towards the characters and a refreshing palatability of message.
What else is there to say? The book contains the necessary detailed descriptions of games, including both cricket and something which is called 'football' but certainly isn't association football and seems to be more like rugby or perhaps American football. It also contains one of the more memorable depictions of exam stress I've seen in a school story. The system of form numbering at St Dominic's is even more confusing than typical for these settings, and the amount of oversight of the boys by authority alarmingly low, but perhaps that was normal for the 1870s. Although the level of ambient cruelty and mockery in the school culture is kind of distressingly high at points (especially near the beginning), the book is also genuinely very funny. I really recommend it.
Well, it's been a while since a book has inspired me to write that much! I am pleased. :)
no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2026 08:30 am (UTC)is divided into two rival gangs very seriously called the Guinea-pigs and the Tadpoles
An important tone-setting aspect of this novel. :D
On your comparison to Tom Brown (which I still haven’t read! shame on me): I remember seeing around, maybe in the Quigley book or on some online reference, that Tom Brown originates the genre, Eric, or Little by Little is an important part of that foundational era of moralizing Victorian school stories, and Fifth Form marks the shift towards 20th c. entertainment. I know that it was very popular in its day, and as you noticed, there’s *such* a difference in how it handles the morality tale part versus earlier examples. Reed is a really entertaining writer! And he seemed to be confident in the ability of a good story to convey its own message. I think that something like The Hill could be considered dated around its publication because Fifth Form came twenty years before it—these books could be fun, actually. (Eric is many things, but “fun for children” it is not.) I really love where this lands in the landscape of the school novel, and I totally get why Reed’s writing would have that kind of impact or at least help hasten a trend.
Re: Loman/Oliver—for me, in addition to MildredMost’s incredible writing of the pairing, they have a really intense physical chemistry. Loman hits Oliver! And Oliver’s anger about that/Loman creates in him a recurring desire to do violence back, which he has to repress and control. This is like, surprisingly physical for schoolboy enemies, who I’ve definitely read doing a lot of games-based competition but not wanting to beat each other up behind the school, you know? I found their enmity pretty compelling, in large part because Oliver wasn’t totally virtuous and actually struggled with his own response to Loman and his provocations.
Wraysford has a really interesting relationship with Oliver, too! As does the little brother Stephen. Everyone is compellingly connected to Oliver and there’s lots of opportunities to write fic featuring any of them. I think that Wraysford was just a bit more boring to me than Loman, who is a character archetype that I like a lot. But Wraysford/Oliver is obviously shippy.
But yeah. Really fun example of its kind, and I’m very happy you enjoyed it. :) The large cast and multiple intertwined storylines are so much more well-handled than they needed to be, if that makes sense, and I’m amazed that this one never caught on beyond the very small set of fic that it has!
no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2026 05:01 pm (UTC)That's really interesting about the development of the genre from moralising to fun adventures. Now, while Tom Brown originated the school story genre as such, the first school story AIUI was The Governess; or the Little Female Academy by Sarah Fielding, which was published a century earlier and consists entirely of moral lessons, so that makes a lot of sense! I would say that Tom Brown is entertaining, though (to flip around what I said in the review, the writing style is fun and lively in a similar way to Reed's). I still haven't read Eric, or Little by Little—I'll have to get to that one next.
Ah, I see. My perception of all the violence was also possibly influenced by Hughes, who has a bit of a thing about the importance of fighting—but not in a slashy way—so that it wasn't so unexpected an element of the culture. Perhaps schoolboy fights declined along with duels between adult gentlemen in wider society!
I am a reliable fan of boring characters :D Anyway, there totally should be more fic about different characters and relationships. I would like to know more about Pembury especially, though I don't have anyone to ship him with yet.
no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2026 09:38 am (UTC)I would expect "football" in this context to be rugby - which was known as "Rugby football" at first. They call it football in Tom Brown's Schooldays as well.
no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2026 05:03 pm (UTC)Well, of course they would in a book actually set at Rugby :D What made me think of American football was the use of the terms 'quarter-back' and 'scrimmage' (rather than 'scrum'), which as far as my limited sports knowledge goes aren't used in modern rugby. OTOH there are fifteen people on a team, which sounds more like rugby.
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Date: Jan. 20th, 2026 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2026 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2026 05:06 pm (UTC)*looks it up* Also a boarding school story! I'll have to try that one too.