Billy Bunter
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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William George Bunter (a.k.a. Billy Bunter, the "Fat Owl of the Remove"), is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He featured originally in stories set at Greyfriars School in the boys weekly story paper The Magnet first published in 1908, and has since appeared in novels, on television, in stage plays, and in comic strips.
Hamilton was not able to continue the Greyfriars saga immediately, as the Amalgamated Press claimed ownership of the rights to the name Greyfriars (though not to Bunter himself). However, by 1946 they had relented and Hamilton was then able to obtain a contract from publishers Charles Skilton for a series of hardback novels. The first of these, Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School, was published in September 1947. It was to prove the first of a series which was to continue for the rest of his life. Subsequently, in the 1950s, the initial novels were reprinted by Cassells, who took over publication of the series, which continued until 1967, with the final novels being published posthumously.
