A Study Guide for E. R. Braithwaite's "To Sir, With Love"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for E. R. Braithwaite's "To Sir, With Love," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535841313

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09

To Sir, With Love

E. R. Braithwaite

1959

Introduction

An autobiographical novel, To Sir, With Love is E. R. Braithwaite's account of his years as a schoolteacher in postwar England, in the rough, working-class neighborhood of London's East End. Originally published in 1959, the novel was adapted into a film in 1966. The novel was Braithwaite's first and is his best-known work. Throughout the course of the novel, the relationship between the narrator (Braithwaite)—who happens to be a citizen of British Guiana and of African descent—and his students is explored. (British Guiana, now Guyana, was until 1966 a British colony. The country is located along the northeastern coast of South America.) Initially, Braithwaite focuses on his status as an outsider (as a black man from another continent) in a country in which he has always felt he belonged due to his British citizenship. Through the examination of the relationship between Braithwaite and the students, the issues of racial and class prejudices are exposed. The best-selling work was a critical success and launched a writing career Braithwaite, as a man of science who had originally pursued a career in physics, had not actively sought. The work continues to be reprinted and remains a valued resource, not only as an engaging work of literature and as a study of the racism in postwar England but also as a relevant tool for the exploration of educational methods and modern race relations.

To Sir, With Love was originally published in 1959 by Bodley Head and is available in a number of more recent editions, including the 1977 Jove (a division of the Berkley Publishing Group) publication.

Author Biography

Braithwaite was born Eustace Edward Ricardo Braithwaite in 1920, in Georgetown, British Guiana, to Charles Edwardo and Elizabeth Martha (Greene) Braithwaite. Ricardo, or Ricky, Braithwaite was well educated, having attended Queen's College in British Guiana. He then went on to City College (now the City University of New York), where he received a bachelor of science degree in 1940. With his educational plans temporarily suspended by World War II (1939-1945), Braithwaite enlisted in the Royal Air Force, serving as a fighter pilot from 1941 through 1945. Following his desire to be a physicist, Braithwaite then went on to University of Cambridge's Gonville and Caius College, where he received his master's degree in physics in 1949. He also studied at the Institute of Education at the University of London. In 1950, after a number of disappointing interviews for positions in the science and technology sector, Braithwaite secured employment as a teacher in London's East End. He worked at St. George-in-the-East Secondary School until 1957, and his experiences contributed to the content of his first published work, the autobiographical novel To Sir, With Love, published in 1959. Following his departure from the educational field, Braithwaite was employed as a welfare officer and a consultant for the London County Council Department of Child Welfare, where he worked from 1958 through 1960. This was followed by a move to Paris, where Braithwaite served as a human rights officer for the World Veteran's Foundation until 1963. Remaining in Paris for several more years, Braithwaite served as an educational consultant and lecturer from 1963 through 1966 for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). From 1967 to 1968,