This paper reads the U.K. Government's "fundamental British values" project alongside two children's Gothic novels, "Coram Boy" (2000) by Jamila Gavin and "City of Ghosts" (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as "fundamental British values" (FBV), making it a requirement…

A wide-ranging discussion of more than 30 British novelists and their works. (PF)

This study investigated how literary elites in three different cultures interpreted a group of novels written by George Lamming, a writer from the Caribbean area whose novels were read, discussed, and interpreted over a span of 20 years beginning in the 1950s. Concludes that cultural differences influenced the readers' interpretations. (JDH)

Describes several approaches to teaching Robert Westall's "The Machine-Gunners." Questions the effectiveness of several activities which are commonly used to teach imaginative texts. (MM)

Examines Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple." Describes secondary school students' reactions to and explorations of the novel. (MM)

Discusses how the author decided to become a writer of historical novels based in Great Britain during the Middle Ages, with an audience of adolescents in mind. Reveals the kinds of decisions authors must make to present historical material and tell a good story simultaneously. (SKC)

Romain Gary was born in Lithuania, moved to France at age 14, and spent much of his adult life in Britain and America. He represents an unusually extreme case of multiple identity in a transnational context. Despite this, Gary's literary oeuvre is not much concerned with the problem of identity. It exhibits instead a tension between protest at the…

The articles in this journal focus on several aspects of adolescent literature. In the first article, author Robert Cormier discusses the process of writing a novel and explains how several of his works came to be. The second article comments on the utilitarian nature of English instruction and its accompanying disparagement of aesthetics. The…

In examining "authenticity to school life" as a criterion for judging school novels, the author looks at the extent to which the writers themselves have considered this important. He focuses on the period 1906-1930, when a fashion arose for some novelists to attack earlier school novels as untrue. (SJL)

Novels about female students in the early years of British university education for women provide insight into established attitudes about the status and expectations of women just before and during the campaign for women's suffrage. They also illustrate how much, and how little, society has changed. (MSE)

Describes a multidisciplinary combination course in teacher training, stressing area studies along with literature. The literary unit was "the industrial novel of the 19th century." Area study covered the industrial revolution and its effects on British society. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)