The Devon School is a real school attended by the author John Knowles as a child but used in the novels A Separate Peace andPeace Breaks Out. It is based on Knowles' alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. Like Phillips Exeter during World War II, Devon is a boys' boarding school in New Hampshire. Knowles places the school in a town that bears its name, specifically at the head of a quaint residential street called Gilman Street. The school "emerged naturally from the town which had produced it." A Separate Peace covers the summer of 1942 and the Winter Session of 1942-1943. The senior year students are being prepared for the war. The timeframe in Peace Breaks Out is 1946-1947. In both of these books, Devon is portrayed as a boys' preparatory school, just as Phillips Exeter was at the time; although Phillips Exeter is today a co-educational school. The Devon School is one of the most prominent fictional examples of a total institution.
Description
The approach from Gilman Street gradually gives way to the Far Common, a leafy, manicured expanse of ground that proceeds the First Academy Building, which Knowles derives almost entirely from the Academy Building at Phillips Exeter, having the same cupola and similar Latin inscription over the entrance. The First Academy Building, the Georgianred brick dormitories, and the Gothic-style chapel, form a quadrangle around the Center Common. There is then a group of Colonial houses for the Dean, the Headmaster, and other faculty members, along an old London-style lane leading from the dormitories to the Naguamsett River and the Crew House. Progressing in another direction, past the Field House the Center Common opens onto the Playing Fields, with tennis courts on the left, the Devon Woods on the right, and enormous open grounds for playing football, lacrosse and soccer. Directly ahead, far across the Playing Fields, is the stadium, the Devon River and the climactic tree that is the basis for a very crucial part of the plot. Beyond all that, Knowles names the excess wilderness as the Fields Beyond. The town of Devon, as described by Knowles, is of course very similar to the real-life Exeter, New Hampshire and the Devon River and the Naguamsett River are based on the Exeter River and the Squamscott River. Exactly like its real-life basis, the fresh-water Devon River eventually falls into the tidal Naguamsett, a marshy, mud-banked saline body of water that eventually connected to the ocean. The two rivers were separated by a dam and a small waterfall.
