26
Shaping Boyhood: Empire Builders and
Adventurers
Dennis Butts
Origins of the Adventure StoryRomances of the Middle Ages, such as the tales of Robin Hood and the story of Bevis of
Hampton, seem to have been the earliest forms of adventure stories British children
enjoyed. Richard Baxter, the famous seventeenth-century preacher, lamented his youth
‘bewitched with a love of romances, fables and old tales’ (Reliquiae Baxterianae, quoted
in Ure 1956:10), and in 1709 Richard Steele described his 8-year-old godson’s
acquaintance with ‘Guy of Warwick’, whose brave deeds included killing a dragon and
repelling Danish invaders.
As more children learned to read, their appetite for adventure stories grew, and, as
well as devouring the romances circulated in chapbooks, they turned to Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Defoe’s novel may have
been intended originally as a tale about Christian Providence, and Swift’s work as a
political satire, but both were often read by children as exciting stories about shipwrecks
and adventures at sea. Many readers have seen Crusoe’s development of his desert
island, particularly with the help of his black servant Man Friday, as a parable of the
way British colonisation worked, and thus connected the ideology of imperialism with
the adventure story almost from its beginnings. Defoe’s work was so popular that it
inspired a whole series of imitations throughout Europe, which were called
‘Robinsonnades’, including versions edited specifically for children. A Swiss pastor,
Johann Wyss, (1743–1818) produced the most famous adventure story for children
modelled upon Robinson Crusoe in The Swiss Family Robinson, first translated into
English in 1814.
In 1814 Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) produced his first historical romance Waverley
in which he showed that exciting adventures need not only be set on desert islands, but
could be just as thrilling when set in the past. Many of his novels were enthusiastically
read by children, and his success helped to establish the form of the historical novel.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), the American novelist, followed Scott’s example in
such stories as The Pioneers (1823), and in writing about the adventures of his fellow
Americans struggling against treacherous foes and the natural elements he discovered
the value of placing the action of his stories on the exotic frontiers of North America.
Defoe, Scott and Cooper did not write specifically for children, but their books were
enjoyed by them, and other writers were eager to provide similar stories designed for