relations in Europe. That tradition was extended by ‘Oliver Optic’ (the pseudonym of
W.T.Adams (1822– 1897)), whose story The Boat Club (1854), about two rival bands of
rowers on a New England lake, became immensely popular. The Story of a Bad Boy
(1868) by T.B.Aldrich (1836–1907) gave the emerging genre a more humorous flavour,
helping to prepare the way for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), by ‘Mark Twain’
(the pseudonym of S.L.Clemens (1835–1910)). Despite its comic beginning, this famous
book’s power depends enormously upon such traditional adventure story ingredients as
Tom and Huck’s involvement with a murder and their subsequent discovery of a
treasure chest.
Many Americans were deeply influenced by the contents and form of British adventure
stories. Howard Pyle (1853–1911), for example, produced The Merry Adventures of Robin
Hood in 1883 and his first historical novel Otto of the Silver Hand in 1888; and later
works such as Esther Forbes’s Johnny Tremain (1943) and Scott O’Dell’s Island of the
Blue Dolphins (1960) show the continuation of that tradition. The success of ‘dime
novels’, works of cheap, sensationalist American fiction which began to appear in the
1860s, also contributed to the enduring popularity of tales of frontier and pioneering life
with heroes like Buffalo Bill, although perhaps only E.S.Ellis (1840–1916), with such
books as The Boy Hunters of Kentucky (1889) and On the Trail of the Moose (1894),
seems to have made much impact on British readers.
New Developments—The Twentieth CenturyThe great scientific and technological changes which took place in the first years of the
twentieth century had an enormous influence on the development of the boys’ adventure
story. The invention of the motor car and particularly the rapid evolution of powered
flight, with von Zeppelin’s airship of 1900 and Blériot’s journey across the Channel in
1909, all began to affect the content of such stories. The outbreak of the First World
War, with the advent of airship and aeroplane attacks, bombing raids, and the
emergence of flying heroes such as Billy Bishop and von Richthofen accelerated these
developments.
Some of Herbert Strang’s books, such as The King of the Air (1908), tried to exploit the
new technology. But the writer who reflected these changes most clearly was Percy
F.C.Westerman (1876–1960); after writing historical novels in the manner of G.A.Henty,
he began to introduce aviation into such stories as The Secret Battleplane (1918) and
Winning his Wings: a story of the R.A.F. (1919).
From now on flying stories, with their formulaic elements of young hero, his
introduction to the skills of aviation, and subsequent encounter with an enemy, whether
in peacetime or war, became an important sub-genre of the adventure story. From the
1930s W.E.Johns (1893–1968) came to dominate the field, eventually becoming even
more popular than Westerman. Johns had served as an airman in the First World War,
and had experience of bombing raids and of being shot down and taken prisoner. When
he eventually left the Royal Air Force, he began to contribute to magazines, and in 1932
published ‘The white Fokker’, his first story about ‘Biggles’, the nickname of the pilot
James Bigglesworth, who was to become his most enduring creation. In the magazine
stories collected in such books as Biggles of the Camel Squadron (1934) Johns
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