However, she turned down Cambridge when Royal Holloway, London offered her a £60 annual scholarship to study there. At school, Richmal was a gifted pupil who attended the local boarding school and was offered a place to study Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. ‘Crompton’ came from her maternal grandfather, who committed suicide by swallowing prussic acid when Richmal was three years old. Richmal Crompton’s full name was Richmal Crompton Lamburn – the middle name was in honour of her grandfather. Famously, Crompton was a woman – a fact which has surprised many readers, probably because of the ‘boys’ own’ feel of the stories, which led some fans to assume Richmal was a man.Ģ. After the publication of Just – William in 1922 she would go on to write a total of 39 books in the series, which would enjoy combined sales of 12 million copies in the UK alone. Richmal Crompton, the creator of William, was born in 1890. But it was the publication in 1922 of the first book of stories to feature him, Just – William, that would introduce him to the reading public at large. That said, William actually made his debut in print a few years before, in the 1919 short story ‘Rice Mould Pudding’.
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