A Question of Upbringing was published by Heinemann in 1951. It opens with one of the most famous scenes in modern English fiction: schoolboys warming themselves by a fire in winter, and among them Kenneth Widmerpool, running alone in the mist — an image that establishes the novel’s method of using precise visual observation to suggest larger patterns of character and destiny.
Nicholas Jenkins is at school (recognizably Eton, though never named) in the early 1920s. His closest associates are Charles Stringham — charming, witty, doomed to alcoholism — and Peter Templer — worldly, confident, sexually precocious. Widmerpool hovers at the edges: socially marginal, physically graceless, but possessed of a determination that the more gifted boys lack. The school chapters establish the social dynamics that will persist across the entire sequence: Stringham will decline, Templer will coast, Widmerpool will rise, and Jenkins will watch.
The second half of the novel follows Jenkins to university and then to France, where he stays with a family to improve his language skills and encounters Widmerpool again — now slightly more polished but fundamentally unchanged. The volume ends with Jenkins’s early days in London, beginning his career in publishing.
Powell’s method is already fully formed in this first volume: the long sentences, the ironic detachment, the precise social observation, and the characteristic way of introducing characters through visual set pieces that reveal personality more eloquently than any direct description.
Collecting A Question of Upbringing
First edition (Heinemann, London, 1951): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $1,000–$3,000
- Very good/very good: $400–$1,000