LE3 .A278 1983

1983

Thompson, Hilary

Acadia University

Master of Arts

Masters

English

English & Theatre Studies

James DeMille, a university professor and writer living in Nova Scotia in the last half of the nineteenth century, wrote six boys' adventure stories based on his school life at Horton Academy, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. The purpose of this thesis is to examine these six books, The B.O. W. C. Series (about the boys of the secret club called The Brethren of the Order of the White Cross) and to establish a place for DeMille and to clarify his significance in the history of Canadian children's literature. Children's literature of DeMille's period was in transition. Thus, his books are historically significant. They are forerunners to a change from didactic, sentimental, often excessively earnest literature to realistic, humorous stories written with a child's dreams, needs and interests in mind. In Canada, he was the first Canadian to write a Series. In the field of children's literature, although he did not purposefully do so, he was among those who led the movement to the new literature for children. · His six boys' adventures are good literature. They are lively, exciting and have quality deriving from their unity of structure and style. They are enduring because they are about universal experience. Change does not take place in isolation; when unique and superior writers like Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson emerge, redirecting the standards of literature, they have benefited by other writers who have gone before and prepared the way. Such a writer was DeMille.

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