Book excerpt: First published in 1984, The Rise of the English Prep School was written to provide the first general history of the English Preparatory School. The book examines how two types of English schools with largely different beginnings, one based on private enterprise and one primarily (but by no means exclusively) on philanthropy, came to be complementary parts of the 'English Public School system'. It explores the early beginnings of prep or quasi-prep schools in the eighteenth century and their development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Rise of the English Prep School will appeal to those with an interest in the history of education, and British social history.