Stories and a novel from The Boys’ Friend newspaper (UK)

 

Six short stories about schoolboys were reprinted in this newspaper during November and December 1922.

  ✎ The Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd. - November 18, 1922

Originally published as “A Corner in Lines”

  ✎ The Cure of the Slackers! - November 25, 1922 †

Originally published as “The Reformation of Study Sixteen”

  ✎ Pillingshot’s First Case! - December 2, 1922 †

Originally published as “Pillingshot, Detective”

  ✎ Scent Per Scent! - December 9, 1922 †

Originally published as “Homœopathic Treatment”

  ✎ The Bluff that Failed! - December 16, 1922 †

Originally published as “Stone and the Weed”

  ✎ The Schemer! - December 23, 1922

Originally published as “The Autograph Hunter”

 

The novel The Gold Bat was serialized in this paper under the title By Order of the League! in eight installments. The first episode is transcribed here:

  By Order of the League! part 1 - January 6, 1923

This episode has some cuts and some minor changes of a purely copy-editorial variety, with no reason to suspect Wodehouse’s hand in the process, and no significant new material. The seventh episode, from February 17, 1923, can be seen at the Friardale site.

 

 

The Boys’ Friend, UK

The Boys’ Friend was a sixteen-page weekly tabloid-sized newspaper. At this time it was priced at a mere tuppence and was published every Monday by the Amalgamated Press Ltd. (the real-life model for Wodehouse’s Mammoth Publishing Company), founded by Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe (Wodehouse’s original for Sir George Pyke/Lord Tilbury). Printed on green paper, it became popularly known as “the Green ’Un,” even in the paper’s own editorial columns.

We are indebted to the Friardale Website for their scans of some of these rare papers; other scans (marked †) were acquired by AK. The transcriptions and commentary here are our own.

The illustrations for these stories are not credited except for a tiny monogram which appears to be an overlapping “SL” with the year digits, e.g. 22; by comparison with the credited illustrations for Greyfriars Holiday Annual, these must also be by Savile Lumley.

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