Richmal Crompton Lamburn was born in Bury, Lancashire, the second child of the Rev Edward John Sewell Lamburn (Classics teacher at the Bury Grammar School) and his wife Clara (née Crompton). Her brother, John Battersby Crompton Lamburn, also became a writer, under the name John Lambourne, and is remembered for his fantasy novel The Kingdom That Was (1931). While a trooper in Rhodesia and later a merchant in China, he developed an interest in insects and spiders and, under the name John Crompton, wrote several books of popular entomology, notably The Life of the Spider (1950).
Richmal Crompton attended St. Elphin's boarding school for the daughters of the clergy. It was originally based in Warrington (Lancashire); she later moved with the School to a new location near Matlock, Derbyshire in 1904. In order to further her chosen career as a schoolteacher, she won a scholarship to the Royal Holloway College in London. She graduated in 1914 with a BA Honours degree in Classics (II class). She also took part in the Women's Suffrage movement at the time. In 1914, she returned to St Elphin’s as a Classics mistress and later, at age 27, moved to Bromley High School in south-east London where she began her writing in earnest. Cadogan shows that she was an excellent and committed teacher at both schools. Having contracted poliomyelitis, she was left without the use of her right leg in 1923. She gave up her teaching career and began to write full-time. Later in her forties, she suffered from cancer and had a mastectomy.
She never married and had no children although she was aunt and great-aunt to other members of her family. Her Just William stories and her other literature were extremely successful and, three years after she retired from teaching, Richmal was able to afford to have a house built (The Glebe) in Bromley Common for herself and her mother, Clara. In spite of her disabilities, during the Second World War she did voluntary work in the Fire Service. She died in 1969 at her home in Chislehurst, London Borough of Bromley. She is also the great aunt to actor Jonathan Massey.
Crompton's best known books are the William stories, about a mischievous 11-year-old schoolboy and his band of friends, known as the Outlaws. Her first short story featuring William to be published was "Rice Mould", published in Home Magazine in 1919: although she had written "The Outlaws" in 1917...it wasn't published until later. In 1922 came the first collection, titled Just William. She wrote 38 other William books throughout her life. The last, William the Lawless was published posthumous in 1970. The William books sold over twelve million copies in the UK alone, and were also adapted for films, stage-plays, BBC radio and television series. Illustrations by Thomas Henry contributed to their success.
Crompton saw her [real] work as writing adult fiction. Starting with The Innermost Room (1923), she wrote 41 novels for adults and published nine collections of short-stories. Their focus was generally Edwardian middle-class life: after the Second World War such literature had an increasingly limited appeal.
Even William was originally created for a grown-up audience. She saw Just William as a potboiler (Cadogan, 1993) and, whilst pleased by its success, seemed frustrated that her other novels and short stories did not receive the same recognition.
Her first published tale, concerning a little boy named Thomas, a forerunner of William, who reacts against authority, was published in The Girls’ Own Paper in 1918. Crompton tried several times to reformulate William for other audiences. Jimmy (1949) was aimed at younger children, and Enter - Patricia (1927) at girls. Crompton wrote two more Jimmy books, but no more Patricia, and neither was as successful as William.
Crompton's fiction centres around family and social life, dwelling on the constraints that they place on individuals while also nurturing them. This is best seen in her depiction of children as puzzled onlookers of society's ways. Nevertheless, the children, particularly William and his Outlaws, almost always emerge triumphant.
The William books have been translated into nine languages and have been sold all over the world.
At the time, Richmal Crompton was considered a 'modern woman' (writer, international recognition, etc).In the late 1960s, her Just William literature was taken out of a small number of libraries by trendy progressives of the type she once satirized in 'William the Detective' ( in the animal-rights satire story 'William and the League of Perfect Love'). Her critics claimed she was 'irrelevant' to contemporary life and also 'utterly middle class' (Cadogan, 1993). They also pressed her publishers to remove the animal-rights satire from 'Detectives as well, thus it does not appear in some editions. The re-publication of the William series in the 1980s received wide acclaim (Cadogan, 1993) and her comic genius is still recognised.
Counted among William's fans was a young John Lennon who, as a boy, reportedly "identified totally with William's rebelliousness, his audacity, his humor, his flights of fantasy, his need always to be the kingpin yet always to have companions, his share-and-share-alike generosity, his proneness to hilarious misspellings and mispronunciations, even his preference for Red Indians over cowboys and addiction to playing the mouth organ. And it was William who inspired him to create his first [childhood] gang of four, united against the world."
