“Quick, Ethel, Your Rifle!”: Portable Britishness and Flexible Gender Roles in G.A. Henty’s Books for Boys

Abstract

Out on Pampas. With Clive In India. With Roberts to Pretoria. Maori and Settler. By Pike and by Dyke. These titles are no longer familiar, though their author, George Alfred Henty, dominated children's literature between 1871 and 1906. wildly prolific Victorian adventure writer had been among first correspondents who traveled globe and sent reports to London via telegraph. In this capacity, he covered Crimean and American Civil Wars, traveled through Near and Middle East, and documented colonial unrest in Africa and Pacific. His name thus carried cultural clout, adding further credibility to his for came to be known as The Boys' Historian, whose 90-odd children's novels were crafted to foster imperial spirit in young men by supplying absolutely trustworthy accounts of all great wars in which English people have been engaged since Norman Conquest (The Cornet Horse i-ii). These jingoist, racist novels, often accompanied by Henty's dedicatory essays to My Dear Lads, proved so that schools regularly limited number each student could borrow per week. Historian Bernard Porter describes a public school headmaster, for example, donating popular novels by ultra-imperialist G.A. Henty (52) for student use in 1890s. Circulated in libraries, purchased by parents, awarded as Sunday school and boys' club prizes, and read as history textbooks for Civil Service exams, Henty's canon, in words his biographer George Manville Fenn, taught more lasting history to boys than all schoolmasters his generation (320). Fenn's assessment suggests extent to which Henty's success hinged on his novels' educational appeal: including pirated editions, twenty-five million books were sold before 1914 (Arnold 17). (1) While many these boy readers later died in trenches Marne and Somme, names others who lived to recall fondly--Arthur Schlesinger, J. Paul Getty, Wendell Willkie, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, A. J. P. Taylor, Henry Miller, and Winston Churchill--speak to his lasting influence. Yet theirs became last who considered as a household name. During past five to ten years, however, Henty's canon has experienced a revival, in large part because American advocates schooling have rediscovered and promoted his work. Numerous reviews in right-wing and conservative Christian journals and websites applaud Henty's texts as model readings and thoughtful presents for children, especially boys. (2) These reviews often ignore Henty's racism by packaging his version empire as refreshingly heroic and patriotic. In New Criterion, for example, Brooke Allen claims: failure multiculturalism to provide American students with a truly multicultural education or worldview has been dismal, as we found out in panicked scramble for information and enlightenment after September 11 attacks. If we had all been reading Henty's To Herat and Kabul instead Babysitter's Club as children, we might have been better prepared! (23) In a column on American Right for Economist, Adrian Wooldridge specifies Henty's primary audience as the growing number people who, out religious conviction, academic frustration and, thanks to a spate school shootings, simple fear, choose to educate their children at home (30). These parents see as a hero ... [whose] books relentlessly preach virtues family loyalty, female modesty and patriotism (30). According to Wooldridge, many schoolers are so persuaded by ideological content Henty's novels that demand still exceeds supply (30) reprints. Before this boom in interest, Henty's novels were rare books, seldom if ever republished. Now Robinson Books, an Oregon-based publisher, has formatted ninety-nine novels as a CD-rom set. …