Henty Goes to School ― School Life in the Novels of G. A. Henty

G.A. Henty (1832-1902) was one of the most prolific and popular writers for boys of his era, famous for his historical and adventure stories of which just over 80 appeared as hardback books. His contemporaries included W.H.G. Kingston (1814-1880), Captain Mayne Reid (1818-1883), R.M. Ballantyne (1825-1894), and George Manville Fenn (1831-1909). Between them, Henty included, they wrote around 550 novels for boys, although surprisingly, given the growing popularity of the school story throughout the second half of the 19th century - fired by the publication of Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays in 1857, F.W. Farrar’s Eric, or Little by Little and St. Winifred’s, or The World of School (1858 and 1862), the “penny dreadful” school stories of writers such as George Emmett, Bracebridge Hemyng and A.H. Burrage, and the later school stories by Ascott R. Hope, H.C. Adams and Talbot Baines Reed - only Kingston and Fenn wrote in this genre, and then only two full-length school stories each. Henty did, however, include episodes set at school in several of his novels, and a selection of these are reproduced here. In order to place them in context, they are preceded by a brief study of Henty’s life, and in particular his own schooldays, at a private school in Kensington and at Westminster School.