Figure 1.--This was issue number 757 of "The Gem Library". The story was apparently about the third form of St. Jim's. I'm not sure what was meant by the St. Jim's Portrait Gallery. Perhaps illustrations of the main characters. |
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We do not know much about the The Gem Library. The issue here is numbered, but not dated, at least on the cover. It is a weekly publication. The number is in the 700s. The style of the illustration, as well as of the cover as a whole, looks more like the 1910s and 20s. The first issue came out March 16, 1907. Week #757 would be in August of 1921. The boys Eton collar shows as school uniform style that was still worn at he time. It looks larger than the ones actually worn. Also note the bow tie that he is wearing with it. As best I can figure out, it was a kind of litterary weekly. I am not sure if each issue was devoted to one story or if there were several stories in an issue. We note one with a school story. Again we are not sure if this publication specialized in school stories or if there were other types of stories as well. Hopefully our British readers will provide some information about The Gem Library. I'm not sure what was meant by the St. Jim's Portrait Gallery here in the issue shown here. Perhaps illustrations of the main characters. I'm not sure who did the illustrations.
The issue here is numbered, but not dated, at least on the cover. It is a weekly publication.
The number of the issue here is in the 700s. The style of the illustration, as well as of the cover as a whole, looks more like the 1910s and 20s. The first issue came out March 16, 1907. Week #757 would be in August of 1921. A HBC reader writes to us, "I've got a hard cover publication which is a collection of Gem issues no's 752 to 758 - must be a remembrance type publication. It is similar to 'The Scout' annuals in respects of containing advertisements. The book, published by The Greyfrairs Press, London does not have a publication date (The book is an unsold copy bought at 2nd hand bookshop and guess wildly to have been printed in the 70s.) In it however, there is advertisement for 'The Greyfrairs Holiday Annual for Boys and Girls, 1923'. A British reader tells us, "The Gem was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s and fell victim to the wartime paper shortage, although 'Clifford' (Hamilton) produced a number of short novels after the war featuring the same characters."
The boys Eton collar shows as school uniform style that was still worn at he time. It looks larger than the ones actually worn. Also note the bow tie that he is wearing with it. Many illustrations in Gym show the younger boys wearing Eton suits with stiff Eton collars. Caps and boaters were very common. Thefre are also illustrations of boys wearing blazers, but this looks to have been more of a sports uniform. This appears to have been uniforms worn at a number of public schools like Eton and Harrow. We are unsure just how common it was a public schools. We also areunsure how common it was in the 1920s. We had thought that the Eton collar was declining in popularity during the 1920s.
I do not yet have much infoirmation about the illustrations in The Gem. I think that there were both photographs and line drawings. We note some photographs, for example, of football players. I'm not sure what was meant by the St. Jim's Portrait Gallery hshown in the issue depicted here (figure 1). Perhaps illustrations of the main characters. Three were many wonderful illustrations in The Gym. Many wonderfully illustrated the stories and the school stort genre. I'm not sure who did the illustrations. Many were not signed.
The Gem weekly was mostly written by the same Frank Richards who produced The Magnet, famous for Greyfriars School and Billy Bunter. The Gem stories are less comical than the Magnet stories and Richards
(whose real name was Charles Hamilton) wrote them under the pen name
Martin Clifford. He had various other aliases, reflecting his enormous
output. Many of the articles in Gem were written under the name of Martin Clifford. He wrote undr the pen names of Frank Richards and Owen Conquest. Hamilton died at Kingsgate in Kent on Christmas Eve 1961 when he was 86. He was an unbelievably prolificic author. Under various names he had written books and stories that may have amounted to a thousand full length novels. For over 30 years he was a major contributor to two well-known Fleetway House magazines (The Gem and The Magnet). He created one of the most famous English schoolboy characters--Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Greyfrairs Remove. The exploits of Billy Bunter and Harry Wharton and Co. were chronicled in The Magnet from 1908 to 1940. Another well-known character, the Hon. Arthur D 'Arcy, the Swell of St. Jim's with his schoolmates Tom Merry, Jack Blake, Talbot (the Toff), Dr. Holmes and many others all chronicled in The Gem. Certainly not great literature, but the stories in The Gem have the charm of stories reflecting an era and a genre of English literature--the school story, There are many fascinating charaters--boys, masters and local citizens. Of course, The Gem was pitched at boys. Few authors did this better than Charles Hamilton. What is interesting is why so many English boys read stories about boys in private schools that they could never attend. We wonder if they were really interested in this genre or if this was one of the few genres presented to them.
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