young readers. Agnes Strickland’s The Rival Crusoes, or the Shipwreck (1826) is a typical
example of a ‘Robinsonnade’. Mrs Hofland’s The Stolen Boy of 1830, about the
adventures of a young boy who is captured by Red Indians in Texas, illustrates the
growth of stories with exotic backgrounds; and Mrs J.B. Webb’s Naomi, or the Last Days
of Jerusalem (1841) reveals the growing interest in historical tales.
This appetite for adventure stories coincided with Britain’s emergence from the
Napoleonic Wars as a great military and naval power, with an expanding empire and a
growing enthusiasm for foreign enterprises. The exploits of Clive in India and of Wolfe in
Canada had whetted boys’ thirst for adventure in the late eighteenth century, and the
more recent triumphs of Nelson and the Duke of Wellington had raised patriotic feeling
to great heights. The rise in popularity and to some extent the contents and form of
adventure stories may be seen as an expression of this feeling and of the growth of
popular interest in the British Empire which rapidly expanded in the nineteenth century.
Captain Frederick Marryat (1792–1848) played the decisive role in establishing the
popularity and forms of the adventure story for children. After a distinguished career as
naval officer, he became the extremely popular author of such seafaring novel’s as The
King’s Own (1830).
In response to a request from his own children to write a story like The Swiss Family
Robinson, Marryat, who was annoyed by that book’s inaccuracies, produced Masterman
Ready: or, the Wreck of the Pacific (1841–1842), the story of a family who are wrecked on
a desert island but protected by the wise advice of an old seafarer. Despite a tendency to
moralise typical of the period, Marryat produced an interesting ‘Robinsonnade’, which
can still surprise us with its broad-minded discussion of imperialism and its unexpectedly
poignant ending. The book’s success encouraged Marryat to continue writing for
children, and he produced a Cooper-like tale, The Settlers in Canada (1844), about the
adventures of an immigrant family who settle near Lake Ontario, despite the threats of
Red Indians and wild animals.
Then in 1847 Marryat published his best book, The Children of the New Forest, a
historical novel about the adventures of the four Beverley children who are orphaned
during the English Civil War. Marryat vividly describes how the children are taken into
hiding in the New Forest by a poor forester who teaches them how to survive by hunting
and farming, and evade capture by parliamentary troopers. Marryat’s story-telling is not
without faults, but in his account of the children’s learning to survive on their own in
the forest (rather like an inland ‘Robinsonnade’), the story of the maturing of Edward
Beverley, the rather rash, eldest teenager, and in his treatment of the historical situation
with a picture of growing understanding and tolerance, Marryat produced a near
masterpiece. With The Children of the New Forest, the first historical novel for children
which has endured, and with his stories of shipwreck and of British settlers struggling
to survive in Canada, Marryat laid down the foundations of the nineteenth-century
adventure story for children.
Meanwhile the British Empire continued to expand. In 1815 it had hardly existed.
Although the West Indies supplied Britain with sugar, Australia was regarded as little
more than a convict station and on the African continent Cape Colony was the only part
inhabited by white people, and they were mainly Dutch. Canada was largely unexplored,
and New Zealand was inhabited by natives only. India was the one major possession
324 SHAPING BOYHOOD: EMPIRE BUILDERS AND ADVENTURERS