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sisters. His father, John Hamilton, was a master carpenter and formerly a
stationer. His grandfather was a landscape gardener, whilst the family can be
traced back to 1771, when a great-grandfather owned houses and The Black Horse
Inn in Berkshire. Charles was a keen reader from an early age.He wrote his first story in 1885. His early work is to be found mainly in the Trapps Holmes boys’ papers and comics, and his output was prodigious, as he was writing at least six stories and serials every week under about 20 different pen-names. Apart from school stories he wrote adventure, romance, travel, crime, humour and serious yarns.
In the autumn of 1906 he wrote his first stories of St Jim’s in Pluck, followed by the appearance in the new Gem in 1907 of Tom Merry and Co.
In 1908 the best-loved and best-known school of all time — Greyfriars — appeared in the Magnet, complete with the immortal Billy Bunter and Harry Wharton & Co. In 1910 he once again created a new school in the Empire Library (Gordon Gay & Co.) whilst in 1915 the Rookwood stories of Jimmy Silver & Co. commenced in the Boys Friend. 1919 saw him create yet another school which was to delight millions of girl readers — Cliff House, for the Schoolfriend; although to be factually accurate, he had introduced Cliff House in his Greyfriars stories many years previously. Whilst school stories were his favourite theme, he also created the Rio Kid — Outlaw stories for the Popular, Ken King of the Islands in Modern Boy and, for the same paper, Len Lex the schoolboy detective, as well as an unusual series called The School for Slackers. All this in addition to his original contributions for the yearly Holiday Annuals.
His work is still being traced and there seems to be no limit to his output. With the closing down of nearly all the juvenile papers in World War II, Charles Hamilton seemed fated to disappear into obscurity, but with the
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publication of the Bunter Books by Charles Skilton (later Cassells took them
over), the Tom Merry Annuals, and the B.B.C. series of Billy Bunter, the fame
which was so rightly due to him came his way. His autobiography, published in 1952 (republished in 1962), was eagerly bought by countless thousands of his admirers, and although it was in the main disappointing, it did reveal many interesting facts about the characters he created.
It has been an almost impossible task to record all his work, but to date the compilers of this biography have discovered over 100 schools he created, with a total of about 5,000 stories. So well-written were they that more than 3,111 were reprinted into various other publications. Almost 75% of the famous Schoolboys Own Library was comprised of reprints of his stories, and probably he penned about a hundred million words in his lifetime.
Towards the end of his life Charles Hamilton suffered not only from ill-health but from the worst handicap which can befall a writer — failing eye-sight; but despite this he never failed to answer the letters which continued to arrive from old and new readers from all over the world. Indeed, shortly before his death, Charles Hamilton personally autographed a Billy Bunter Annual for the son of the publisher of this biography, and gave him advice on how to succeed at his new school.
On Christmas Eve, 1961, the radio and TV gave the news of Charles Hamilton’s death, which must have spoilt the festivities for a large number of admirers. Probably he received more news coverage than any other writer of boys’ fiction, and many mourned the loss of ‘Frank Richards’, ‘Martin Clifford’ and ‘Owen Conquest’. Mrs Una Harrison, Charles’s sister, died suddenly a few years ago, but Mrs Una Hamilton-Wright, her daughter, and the niece of Charles Hamilton, is engaged on the writing of a biography of her uncle. (Note – Biography has now been published)"
