Hughes, Thomas
The idea for Tom Brown´s Schooldays came one day when Thomas Hughes was wondering what to say to his son, aged 8, before he went off to Rugby. He decided that good might be done by writing a real novel for boys, written in a right spirit but distinctly aimed at being interesting.
The novel was originally published as being by an Old Boy of Rugby, and much of it is based on the author´s experiences. Tom Brown is largely based on the author´s brother, George Hughes; and George Arthur, another of the book´s main characters, is generally believed to be based on Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. The fictional Tom´s life also resembles the author´s in that the culminating event of his school career was a cricket match.
One of the classics of English children´s literature, and one of the earliest books written specifically for boys, this novel´s steady popularity has given it an influence well beyond the upper middle-class world that it describes. It tells a story central to an understanding of Victorian life, but its freshness helps to distinguish it from the narrow schoolboy adventures that it later inspired.
One of the secondary characters in the novel is Harry Flashman, developed at the late 1960´s as a hero in the Flashman novels, by George McDonald Fraser.