For many, mention of “Just William” summons a nostalgic pastoral of interwar childhood: one of twirling maypoles on somnolent village greens, vicarages frequented by well-meaning, nosy parishioners, games of conkers and knock-down ginger played till dusk. The reality, of course, is that few readers will have experienced such quaint youths: the carefree, sugarcoated gleam of a vanished Britain. As a friend of mine puts it, the freedoms enjoyed by William in a safe and bucolic universe contrasted starkly with the realities of her own childhood: “You could go to the fields or the fair by yourself. There wasn’t so much parental control.”
It’s a childhood that now feels alien, the stories brimming with action: The boys vex stray cats, make “licorice water,” sling homemade catapults, walk for miles across fields and through hedgerows, climb trees, fall into ditches, and draw the ire of their schoolmasters, sweet-shop owners and local farmers, and sometimes all at once. It’s worth noting here that the “Just” of “Just William,” the title of Crompton’s first official book of William stories, published in 1922, is not a nod to his moral character, but rather a kind of shrug: Take him or leave him, he won’t change.
‘I often refer to him as my Frankenstein monster,’ Crompton said in a 1968 radio interview. ‘I’ve tried to get rid of him, but he’s quite impossible to get rid of.’
The mischief isn’t born of malice: It’s most often a product of benign misunderstanding. And yet, in a world of Blyton books, filled with “well-to-do” children embarking on heroic countryside adventures, or slumming it at boarding school, the William stories could feel outrageous, even dangerous. The author’s ambiguous name, especially in the series’ early years, added the exciting implication for some female readers — normally limited to more moralistic fare — that these were “boys’ books.”
Perhaps this appealed to Crompton herself. A vicar’s daughter and lifelong Conservative, Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890, to a comfortable, middle-class household. She taught classics in an all-girls school until the age of 32, when she contracted polio. The illness left her disabled, and, forced to abandon teaching, she turned to writing. Over the next 50 years, Crompton would publish more than 300 “Just William” stories as well as 40 novels for adults (none of which has proved as lasting a literary legacy). She was halfway through her 359th story at the time of her death, in 1969.
Of course, William has not made it to the 21st century unscathed. One story, “William and the Nasties” (1935), was deemed to have antisemitic undertones (although intended as an allegory of fascism) and has been withdrawn from reprints. Certain turns of phrase, and incidences of “blacking up” and playing “Cowboys and Indians,” as well as treatment of animals, have been reviewed by the books’ publisher, Macmillan.
