Richmal Crompton

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Richmal Crompton 's great popularity during her lifetime and her later enduring fame rest on her extraordinary outpouring of William stories for children, published between 1922 and 1970. There were thirty-eight books of William stories in all, and sometimes two in the same year. Some of the stories were adapted for radio, television, and movies. RC also published, more importantly to herself, over forty novels and collections of stories for adults which were generally set in her own time. They focussed on the romantic, the domestic, the shaping of the personality in childhood, and on women's sometimes late development of independence.

Milestones

15 November 1890

RC was born in Bury, Lancashire, the second eldest in a family of three surviving siblings.
Cadogan, Mary. Richmal Crompton. Sutton.
1-2

1918

RC 's first commercially published story, Thomas: The Boy Who Would Grow Up, appeared in the Girl's Own Paper. Thomas was a less colourful precursor to William Brown.
Williams, Kay. Just Richmal. Genesis.
64

May 1922

Twelve previously published stories by RC were collected as the first William book, Just—William. The next month fourteen other stories appeared in More William.
Williams, Kay. Just Richmal. Genesis.
96

11 January 1969

RC died in hospital at Farnborough in Kent after suffering a second heart attack.
Cadogan, Mary. Richmal Crompton. Sutton.
157
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1970

The last of RC 's William books, William the Lawless, was published posthumously in the year after her death.
Williams, Kay. Just Richmal. Genesis.
221

Biography

RC 's mother's maiden name was Crompton, and this was one of RC's two given names. Her nom de plume, formed of these two given names, therefore sounded as if she bore her mother's maiden surname.

Birth and Family