Richmal Crompton

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Standard Name: Crompton, Richmal
Birth Name: Richmal Crompton Lamburn
Nickname: Ray Lamburn
Self-constructed Name: Richmal Crompton
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.
Black-and-white portrait of Richmal Crompton, wears a dark, velvety hat and tweed blazer.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Sue Townsend
ST was eight before she learned to read but from then on, although she did poorly at school, she read with enthusiasm. After Richmal Crompton (Just William) came Charlotte Brontë : Jane Eyre...
Education Bessie Head
Despite restrictions Bessie read a good many children's books. Richmal Crompton was an especial favourite; she read as many of the William books as she could get hold of and later judged William a GIANT...
Education Deborah Moggach
From her early reading DM chose Richmal Crompton 's William Brown as her hero. She loved the way that Crompton and Beatrix Potter used words that would be new discoveries to most of their child readers.
Moggach, Deborah. “Autobiography”. Deborah Moggach: About Deborah.
Sanderson, Caroline. “Deborah Moggach interview”. Mslexia, No. 55, Sept. 2012, pp. 51-3.
53
Education Penelope Mortimer
Penelope Fletcher (later PM ) was educated at private schools all over the place,
Gordon, Giles. “Obituary: Penelope Mortimer”. Guardian Weekly, 28 Oct. 1999, p. 26.
26
at least one of them hopelessly incompetent.
Lord, Graham. John Mortimer, The Devil’s Advocate. The Unauthorised Biography. Orion, 2005.
58
Around the time that her mother became mortally ill, in 1928, Penelope...
Education Julia O'Faolain
JOF 's mother used to tell her suspense-driven fairy-tales, most of which were later published.
O’Faolain, Julia. Trespassers, A Memoir. Faber and Faber, 2014.
6
When Julia was very young they gave her nightmares.
O’Faolain, Julia. Trespassers, A Memoir. Faber and Faber, 2014.
2-3
Her father agreed to give her The Child's...
Education Fleur Adcock
FA began her schooling in England, where she attended thirteen different schools, because of her father's employment and because the war proper brought evacuation from the London area.
Vincent, Sally. “Final touch”. Guardian Unlimited, 29 July 2000.
The recurrent need to start over...
Education Beryl Bainbridge
BB described her reading at nine years old as a mixture: George Eliot and children's writers like Richmal Crompton and Susan Coolidge (Sarah Woolsey ): Just William, What Katy Did, The Mill...
Education Carol Ann Duffy
Formative books for the child CAD were Lewis Carroll 's Alice in Wonderland (a gift from her grandfather when she was seven), Richmal Crompton 's William books (I was William the anarchist and rebel...
Intertextuality and Influence Noel Streatfeild
In course of the story Paul learns that it would not be good to make the supreme sacrifice of his medical ambitions for the sake of his sister Jane's training as a ballet-dancer, Jane is...
Publishing Emmuska Baroness Orczy
This volume carried end-pages of publisher's advertisements for other novels including many by women: Ruby M. Ayres , Inez Bensusan , Marjorie Bowen , Richmal Crompton , Berta Ruck , and O. Douglas (sister of John Buchan).
Orczy, Emmuska, Baroness. Blue Eyes and Grey. Hodder and Stoughton, 1928.
end pages
Reception Kate Greenaway
Some twentieth-century portrayals of children as scruffy and irritating to adults, like Richmal Crompton 's highly popular William series, can be seen as reactions against KG 's style. Ruari McLean has called Greenaway's later work...
Textual Features Jane Gardam
Lucy is a naughty child, too: when she breaks into an empty house or ruins a cake bought for her mother's snooty visitor Mrs Binge-Benson, she seems like a younger sister of Richmal Crompton 's...
Textual Features Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole carried the genes of the British talent for humour, as formerly represented by Stella Gibbons and Angela Thirkell , but in a newly anarchic and ungenteel form. Like Richmal Crompton in the William...
Textual Features Elizabeth De la Pasture
The characters are a delight. Dreamy Dorothea, the eldest child, writes poetry (Beetle-browed, bandy-legged, brawling old forbear [sic] of mine, / Thee I do sternly adjure . . . .
De la Pasture, Elizabeth et al. The Unlucky Family. Folio Society, 1980.
128
Wilful William (an...

Timeline

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Texts

Crompton, Richmal. Blue Flames. Hodder and Stoughton, 1930.
Crompton, Richmal. Dread Dwelling. Boni and Liveright, 1926.
Crompton, Richmal. Enter—Patricia. George Newnes, 1927.
Crompton, Richmal. Felicity’Stands By. George Newnes, 1928.
Crompton, Richmal. Four in Exile. London and New York, 1955.
Crompton, Richmal. Journeying Wave. Macmillan, 1938.
Crompton, Richmal, and Thomas Henry Fisher. Just—William. George Newnes, 1922.
Crompton, Richmal. Linden Rise. Hutchinson, 1952.
Crompton, Richmal. Naomi Godstone. George Newnes, 1930.
Crompton, Richmal. Steffan Green. Macmillan, 1940.
Crompton, Richmal. The Holiday. Macmillan, 1933.
Crompton, Richmal. The House. Hodder and Stoughton, 1926.
Crompton, Richmal. The Inheritor. Andrew Melrose, 1960.
Crompton, Richmal. The Innermost Room. Andrew Melrose, 1923.
Crompton, Richmal. The Odyssey of Euphemia Tracy. Macmillan, 1932.
Crompton, Richmal, and Henry Ford. William the Lawless. George Newnes, 1970.