Talbot Baines Reed (3 April 1852 – 28 November 1893) was an English writer of boys' fiction who established a genre of school stories that endured into the mid-20th century.

Reed's affinity with boys, his instinctive understanding of their standpoint in life and his gift for creating believable characters, ensured that his popularity survived through several generations.

Over the years, Charles expanded his business interests, and by 1861 had prospered sufficiently to acquire the Thorowgood type foundry in Fann Street, City of London.

[6] Talbot's eldest brother, Charles junior, had been notably successful there, as captain of the school and a leading figure in its cricket and football teams.

Reed later showed some reticence about his academic achievements, asserting that one of his few successes was winning "the comfortable corner desk near the fire", reserved for the bottom place in Mathematics.

Twice he walked the 53 miles (85 km) from London to Cambridge, each time leaving on Friday afternoon and arriving at St John's College for breakfast on Saturday.

Early in his career he met the leading printer and bibliographer of the day, William Blades, from whom he acquired a lasting fascination with the printing and typefounding crafts.

[10] While still relatively inexperienced, Reed was asked by Blades to help organise a major exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of William Caxton's printing of The Game and Playe of the Chesse.

However, Blades's research indicated that Caxton's first printing in England had been in 1477, of a different book: The Dictes and Notable Wise Sayings of the Philosophers,[11] so the quatercentenary celebrations were rescheduled accordingly.

[17] In 1878, in response to a suggestion from Blades, Reed began work on a general history of typefounding in England, a task which occupied him intermittently for nearly ten years.

[22][23] The Reed family had longstanding connections with The Religious Tract Society (RTS), which had been founded in 1799 to publish and disseminate material of a Christian nature.

[4] On 23 July 1878 an RTS subcommittee (including both Charles Reeds) recommended the publication of "a magazine for Boys to be issued weekly at a price of one penny".

[25] Although the Society had frequently expressed a desire to counter the "cheap and sensational" magazines that were read by young people, its main committee was initially hesitant about this proposal, fearing its financial implications.

[28] For the first issue of the B.O.P., Reed wrote a school story, "My First Football Match" which, accompanied by a half-page illustration, appeared on the front page "by An Old Boy".

[29] In the new magazine's first year Reed was a regular contributor of articles and stories on a range of subjects, joining distinguished writers such as G. A. Henty,[30] R.M.

delayed progress on his History of the Old English Letter Foundries, especially as Reed began writing regular columns and book reviews for the Leeds Mercury,[4] now edited by his cousin, the younger Edward Baines.

[32] The 1880s was a decade of growing national prosperity, and increasing numbers of families from the expanding middle classes were sending their sons to boarding schools.

[33] Reed's first response to the request for school stories for The Boy's Own Paper was The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch, which ran for 19 instalments from October 1880 to April 1881.

The boarding school milieu was repeated, with a few variations, in The Willoughby Captains (serialised 1883–84), The Master of the Shell (1887–88), The Cock-House at Fellsgarth (1891)[n 4] and Tom, Dick and Harry (1892–93).

"[39] In a biographical sketch written in 2004, the historian Jeffrey Richards characterises Reed's work as a mixing of the earlier school story traditions established by Dean Farrar and Thomas Hughes, crafted with a vivid readability.

Quigly lists among other recurrent features the stolen exam paper, the innocent who is wrongly accused and ultimately justified after much proud suffering, the boating accident, the group rivalries, the noble friendships.

[40] Reed established a tradition in which the fictional boarding school was peopled by such characters and was almost invariably represented in terms of "dark passages, iron bedsteads, scratched desks, chill dormitories and cosy, shabby studies".

[44] The connection with Ireland was of great value to Reed, and the family regularly spent annual holidays on the shores of Lough Swilly in County Donegal.

[9] Alongside his heavy schedule of duties at the foundry and his prolific writing, he took his share in the supervision of the various charities founded by his grandfather Andrew Reed, and was a deacon at his local Congregational Church.

[44] In 1892 he was a co-founder of the Bibliographical Society and its first honorary secretary, an office he modestly agreed to hold "pro tem in the hopes of your finding a better man".

The loss of his baby daughter was followed, soon after, by the death of his younger brother Kenneth, drowned with a companion in Lough Allen in County Leitrim, while exploring the River Shannon.

[49][50] He relinquished the secretaryship of the Bibliographical Society and returned to Ireland where, though largely confined indoors, he continued writing his regular weekly column for the Leeds Mercury and finished his final novel, Kilgorman.

Sime wrote of Reed's particular empathy with the young: "He possessed in himself the healthy freshness of heart of boyhood ... and could place himself sympathetically at the boy's standpoint in life.

[57] Reed himself expressed the guiding principles of his life in a letter addressed to a new Boys' Club in Manchester: "The strong fellows should look after the weak, the active must look after the lazy, the merry must cheer up the dull, the sharp must lend a helping hand to the duffer.

"[52] The grave in Abney Park was eventually surmounted by a memorial stone for Reed's family in the style of a Celtic cross, reflecting their connections to Ireland.