Elizabeth Gertrude Bunter, better known as Bessie Bunter, is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton, who also created her more famous brother

Billy Bunter William George Bunter is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, a fictional English public school in Kent, originally published in the boys' weekly ...

History

Billy Bunter was a central character in the

Greyfriars School Greyfriars School is a fictional English public school used as a setting in the long-running series of stories by the writer Charles Hamilton, who wrote under the pen-name of Frank Richards. Although the stories are focused on the Remove (or l ...

stories which appeared in the boys' story paper ''

The Magnet ''The Magnet'' was a British weekly boys' story paper published by Amalgamated Press. It ran from 1908 to 1940, publishing a total of 1,683 issues. Each issue cost a halfpenny and contained a long school story about the boys of Greyfriars S ...

'' from 1907 to 1940, and Bessie's first appearance was in a 1919 Greyfriars story. She was a pupil of Cliff House School, a girls' school near Greyfriars. In 1919, attempting to replicate the success of ''The Magnet'',

Amalgamated Press The Amalgamated Press (AP) was a British newspaper and magazine publishing company founded by journalist and entrepreneur Alfred Harmsworth (1865–1922) in 1901, gathering his many publishing ventures together under one banner. At one point the ...

decided to bring out a new magazine for girls called ''The

School Friend ''School Friend'' was the name of two different British weekly publications marketed toward girls, both of which were pioneering in their respective categories. The first ''School Friend'', published from 1919 to 1929, was the first story paper ...

'' (later continued as ''

The Schoolgirl ''The Schoolgirl'' was a British weekly story paper aimed at girls. Published by Amalgamated Press (AP), ''The Schoolgirl'' ran in two series, the first from 1922 to 1923, and the second (essentially continuing a sister publication) from 1929 to 1 ...

''), which included stories about Cliff House originally by Hamilton, using the pen name "Hilda Richards," supposedly the sister of "Frank Richards." The stories were soon taken over by other authors, also using the name Hilda Richards. The most prolific of these substitute writers was John W. Wheway, who wrote well over 500 Cliff House stories between 1931 and 1940. Hamilton wrote one more Cliff House story, in 1949, called "Bessie Bunter of Cliff House School", and published by Cassell. The character also appeared in comic strip format in the ''

'' comic book, which was published from 1950 to 1965; she later moved to ''

June June is the sixth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the second of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the third of five months to have a length of less than 31 days. June contains the summer solstice in ...

'', and, when that title ended, moved to '' Tammy''. In addition, she featured as an adult character in '' The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier'' where she married the former Greyfriars schoolboy Harry Wharton.

Character

Bessie Bunter was essentially a female counterpart to her brother Billy, sharing many characteristics with her brother, including her large size and large appetite. She was as unappealing as her brother Billy, being conceited, untruthful, gluttonous and obese, but she was rather more domineering than he was and would usually impose her will by nagging, or, in the case of her brothers, by administering hefty slaps to the head..

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History

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