Richmal Crompton - Work

Work

Crompton's best known books are the William stories, about a mischievous 11-year-old schoolboy and his band of friends, known as "The Outlaws". Her first short story featuring William to be published was "Rice Mould", published in Home Magazine in 1919. (She had written "The Outlaws" in 1917, but it was not published until later.) In 1922, the first collection, entitled Just William, was published. She wrote 38 other William books throughout her life. The last, William the Lawless, was published posthumously in 1970. The William books sold over twelve million copies in the United Kingdom alone. They have been adapted for films, stage-plays, and BBC radio and television series. Illustrations by Thomas Henry contributed to their success. The now more or less universally applied generic title "Just William" started to appear in the 1970s, following the 1976 BBC TV version which brought the stories far more widely into popular culture.

Crompton saw her real work as writing adult fiction. Starting with The Innermost Room (1923), she wrote 41 novels for adults and published nine collections of short-stories. Their focus was generally Edwardian middle-class life; after the Second World War, such literature had an increasingly limited appeal.

Even William was originally created for a grown-up audience, as she saw Just William as a potboiler (Cadogan, 1993). She was pleased by its success, but seemed frustrated that her other novels and short stories did not receive the same recognition. Her first published tale was published in The Girls’ Own Paper in 1918, concerning a little boy named Thomas, a forerunner of William who reacts against authority. Crompton tried several times to reformulate William for other audiences. Jimmy (1949) was aimed at younger children, and Enter - Patricia (1927) at girls. Crompton wrote two more Jimmy books, but no more Patricia, and neither was as successful as William.

According to the actor John Teed, whose family lived next door to Crompton, the model for William was Crompton's nephew Tommy.

"As a boy I knew Miss Richmal Crompton Lamburn well. She lived quietly with her mother in Cherry Orchard Road, Bromley Common. My family lived next door. In those days it was a small rural village. Miss Lamburn was a delightful unassuming young woman and I used to play with her young nephew Tommy. He used to get up to all sorts of tricks and he was always presumed to be the inspiration for William by all of us. Having contracted polio she was severely crippled and confined to a wheelchair. Owing to her restricted movements she took her setting from her immediate surroundings which contained many of the features described, such as unspoilt woods and wide streams and Biggin Hill Aerodrome, very active in the Twenties."

Crompton's fiction centres around family and social life, dwelling on the constraints that they place on individuals while also nurturing them. This is best seen in her depiction of children as puzzled onlookers of society's ways. Nevertheless, the children, particularly William and his Outlaws, almost always emerge triumphant.

The William books have been translated into nine languages and have been sold all over the world.