The Prodigious Hickey

What It's About

A collection of linked comic stories set at Lawrenceville, a boys' preparatory school in New Jersey, built around Hickey, a boy whose ingenuity, charm and talent for mischief make him something of a school legend. The stories are set in the years after the end of caning, when relations between masters and boys had settled into a wary, watchful truce. The tone is affectionate and humorous, and a lively portrait of boarding-school life in early twentieth-century America.

Key Concepts

The stories explore schoolboy honour and loyalty, the contest between youthful mischief and institutional authority, and the unwritten codes by which boys govern themselves. A strong note of nostalgia runs through them.

About the Author

Owen Johnson (1878–1952) was an American novelist and short-story writer, born in New York City, the son of the editor and poet Robert Underwood Johnson. He drew on his own schooldays at Lawrenceville and later studied at Yale. He worked as a war correspondent during the First World War and later stood unsuccessfully for Congress.