Full of enthusiasm, young English schoolmaster Mr. Chipping came to teach at Brookfield in 1870. It was a time when dignity and a generosity of spirit still existed, and the dedicated new schoolmaster expressed these beliefs to his rowdy students. Nicknamed Mr. Chips, this gentle and caring man helped shape the lives of generation after generation of boys. He became a legend at Brookfield, as enduring as the institution itself. And sad but grateful faces told the story when the time came for the students at Brookfield to bid their final goodbye to Mr. Chips.
There is not another book, with the possible exception of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, that has quite the same hold on readers’ affections. James Hilton wrote Goodbye, Mr. Chips in loving memory of his schoolmaster father and in tribute to his profession. Over the years it has won an enduring place in world literature and made untold millions of people smile—with a catch in the throat.
“Warming to the heart and nourishing to the spirit...The most profoundly moving story that has passed this way.”—So said usually cynical critic Alexander Woollcott when GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS was first published in 1934, and his openhearted welcome to this delightful, memorable, moving novel has been echoed through the years by millions of readers as well as two generations of film-goers.
The gentle, lovable, tough English schoolmaster is one of America’s favorite people. Who can forget the image of “Chips” on the day when he took a young and radical bride; the sad April Fools’ Day when he lost her; the little jokes his classes came to expect; the boy whose father sailed on the Titanic; the intrusion of World War I into the peace and seclusion of Brookfield...all the pleasures and pains of a lifetime rich in teaching with love.
GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS is one of the most beloved books of our time.