The ol' Life and ol' Times of ol' Tom Brown

 Sometimes I see a YT thumbnail and I must click it. This is how I fell into my newest and unexpected mini-obsession. Let me share aforementioned thumbnail;

COME ON, he looks so distraught, what is this?! With the promise of a 3hr 38m journey into this kid's 1830's (? I think) school life as presented by the BBC in 1971, of course I had no choice but see what the HELL this was. The opening credits;

 

 

Boy ... let me tell you about the supermassive sinkhole I tripped into thanks to YouTube recommendations. So, yes, this is the TV series, based on an apparently multi-generationally universally beloved novel written in 1857. I ended up watching all of it in 2 sittings, it's still very fun and insane and mysteriously watchable; I'm kinda obsessed. I didn't find the obsession until I looked for it on eBay though, which I feel might have been a grave error. I really don't want to go off on a tangent here, so I'll try to keep this semi-brief because I can't decide whether I want to make this post about the TV series or the books- but I don't have anything compiled about the show (or movies!) yet so I'll just go with literature for now. But you see, I had to cite the initial draws. The show itself is so fun though, I really am tempted to do an episodic breakdown/ commentary thing on it .. holy hell. Anyhow, right, the books.

I ran an initial search on eBay for the novel it was based on. There were more than ELEVEN THOUSAND copies for sale, and probably 100+ editions in English at first scroll-thru. What on earth? What is this and why haven't I heard of it? Looking into it I learned very quickly that it is indeed a long-treasured tale. A bildungsroman goliath of cultural importance even. Matter of fact, there are some really cool facts about this series. The first version of it on film is a silent film from 1916, and that version is weirdly fun and highly watchable too. Just incredible to me. Ash did a little digging too and read something like it was the most popular English language novel in Japan's Meiji era (1868-1912)? And the funny thing is; while watching the tv series I kept thinking how so many Japanese school life shows I've seen felt a lot like it. The whole thing is just utterly fascinating to me. The reach and influence of this single british novel (and its followup of Tom's college years that I know nothing about). Idkidk, I am just besotted by it all and I can't fully explain it. Here's a little fact snippet from the never-wrong internet;

So right, I mentioned it being a grave error, the looking it up on eBay bit. That's because I'm a sucker for beautiful antique editions of books and there are Quite A Few beautiful Tom Browns's. I ended up buying a couple from the late 1800s and early 1900s. I collected a ton of covers for this post though, and I'm sorry in advance for how trash they'll look on this site having no control over how they'll display here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Just a smattering of extremely affordable choices, and none of these are even the editions I bought! Ugh, damn it. Here are the ones I ended up getting;

Son of a bitch. They're so pretty. I saved a handful of endearing dedications and notes inside covers too; I'll post those next time though. I don't have any editing left in me for today and I'm too impatient to sit on this any longer. I feel the weirdest urge to make fanart for this silly old "franchise"? I don't even know if it can be called that. But man, I think I love it. It's altogether charming, virtuous, satisfying, uncomfortable, weird, raw, and completely fucked up. God Bless You, Tom Brown. More to come later, for sure.