Robert J. Kirkpatrick
Robert J Kirkpatrick is a researcher and writer on boys' fiction.
He was born in Stourbridge, on 2 November 1953 and attended grammar school in Lichfield, Staffordshire. He worked as a benefit officer for the Notting Hill Housing Trust from 1990, and wrote some best practice guides for Housing Associations.
Kirkpatrick has written extensively on boy's fiction and is the Secretary of the Children's Books History Society, the British branch of the Friends of the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections of children's books at the Toronto Public Library. He has written several short monographs for the society.
One recent work, Henty Goes to School: School Life in the Novels of G.A. Henty
Kirkpatrick introduced the topic in the context of Henty's own schooling and then interposed passages about school life from Henty's books with commentary. G. A. Henty never wrote a full book set in a school setting.
Kirkpatrick's most recent work has concentrated on illustrations and he has produced two books on illustrations. He has contributed a whole series of thorough and detailed biographies of illustrators of children's books on the Bear Alley blog.
Works
| No | Year | Title | Other Author/s | Pages | Publisher | ISBN | BL | Source of data, if other than BL |
| 1 | 1990 | Bullies, Beaks and Flannelled Fools: An Annotated Bibliography of Boys' School Fiction, 1742–1990 | 120 | Author, London | 0951637304 | |||
| 2 | 1999 | Housing Benefit: A Good Practice Guide for Housing Associations | National Housing Federation, London | Encyclopedia.com | ||||
| 3 | 1999 | Housing Benefit Overpayments: A Good Practice Guide | National Housing Federation, London | Encyclopedia.com | ||||
| 4 | 2000 | The Encyclopedia of Boys' School Stories | Rosemary Auchmuty, Joy Wotton | 385 | Ashgate, Aldershot | 9780754600831 | ||
| 5 | 2001 | Bullies, Beaks and Flannelled Fools: An Annotated Bibliography of Boys' School Fiction, 1742–2000, 2nd ed. | 337 | Author, London | 0951637312 | |||
| 6 | 2001 | Victorian Boys' School Stories in Books and Periodicals: A Bibliography | Michael Rupert Taylor | 107 | Author, London | |||
| 7 | 2002 | A Guide to Housing Benefit Overpayments | Notting Hill Housing Trust, London | Encyclopedia.com | ||||
| 8 | 2006 | Before Tom Brown: The Birth and Development of the Boys' School Story | 16 | Children's Books History Society, London | ||||
| 9 | 2010 | The Three Lives of Bernard Heldmann | 32 | Children's Books History Society, London | ||||
| 10 | 2013 | From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha'penny Dreadfuller: A Bibliographic History of the Boys' Periodical in Britain 1762–1950 | 528 | The British Library, London | 9780712309547 | |||
| 11 | 2013 | Wild Boys in the Dock: Victorian Juvenile Literature and Juvenile Crime | 33 | Children's Books History Society, London | ||||
| 12 | 2016 | Pennies, Profits and Poverty: A Biographical Directory of Wealth and Want in Bohemian Fleet Street | 550 | Hanwell, London | 9781518690990 | |||
| 13 | 2016 | Henty Goes to School: School Life in the Novels of G.A. Henty, edited with an introduction by Robert J. Kirkpatrick | G. A. Henty | 264 | CreateSpace | 9781530447312 | ||
| 14 | 2017 | Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire schools, Fact v Fiction | 375 | Mosaic, Middleton-in-Teesdale | 9780993597053 | |||
| 15 | 2019 | Picturing Tom Brown: How Artists Have Illustrated "Tom Brown's Schooldays" | 90 | Author, London | 9781072137566 | Bear Alley | ||
| 16 | 2019 | The Men Who Drew for Boys : 101 Forgotten Illustrators of Children's Books 1844–1970 | 559 | Author, London | 9781796820980 | Bear Alley | ||
| 17 | 2020 | The Lost Diaries of Nigel Molesworth | Geoffrey Willans | 69 | Author, London | 9798602683387 | Yes | |
| 18 | 2024 | Before Tom Brown: The Origins of the School Story | 232 | Lutterworth Press | 9780718897376 | Yes | ||
| 19 | 2025 | Publishers, Profits and Poverty: A Biographical Directory of Publishing in Bohemian Fleet Street | 459 | Cambridge Scholars Publishing | 9781036445935 | No |