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Recollections of Greyfriars School in the county of Kent, Billy Bunter, Harry Wharton, the Famous Five, Smithy the Bounder, Quelchy, Inky, the lovely Marjorie, the 'Three Fishers', old Wingate, the venerable Dr Locke.. the list goes on, thanks to the pen Of Frank Richards, Charles Hamilton's most famous pseudonym.
The facts on THE MAGNET bear repeating. A weekly story paper, usually 28 pages in length (near A4 in physical size), it ran from 1908 to 1940 through 1683 issues.
Frank Richards in his lifetime was reputed to have written the equivalent of 1000 full-length novels. He could produce a 35,000 word story for the MAGNET in a matter of days, putting down 50 words a minute via his ancient Remington typewriter. His manuscripts rarely required any corrections and generally went straight to the printers for typesetting. He was happy writing school stories and did not suffer from any delusions of grandeur.
Frank Richards often sent his characters to foreign shores, quite often to lands he had never visited. A good example is the 'Harry Wharton in Texas' series, issues 1573—82
Many contributors to the early Collectors Digest regarded the 'golden period' of 'The Magnet' (TM from here on) as being around the early 1930s. Many readers of TM first read the paper in the early 1930s and no doubt, like readers of other story papers, regarded the stories they first read as being the best.
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