'Boy's Weeklies And Frank Richards' Reply' (1940) by George Orwell

'Boys' Weeklies' is an essay by George Orwell in which he analyses those weekly story-paper publications for boys which were current around 1940. After being published in Horizon in abridged form, it was published alongside two of his other pieces in 'Inside The Whale And Other Essays' (1940).

The essay deals primarily with the School Stories published in The Magnet and The Gem and also with the 'Tuppenny Bloods' published by D.C. Thomson.

Orwell suggested that the style of The Magnet and Gem was deliberately formulaic so that it could be copied by a panel of authors whom he erroneously supposed to lie behind the author's names. He also denigrated the works as outdated, snobbish and right-wing, (Orwell 1940).

He characterises the mental world of The Magnet and Gem as being "1910 – or 1940, but it is all the same ... there is a cosy fire in the study ... The King is on his throne ... Everything will be the same forever."