Adventure Fiction - Adventure Novels For Children

Adventure Novels For Children

Adventure novels written specifically for children began in the 19th century. Early examples include Johann David Wyss' The Swiss Family Robinson (1812), Frederick Marryat's The Children of the New Forest (1847) and Harriet Martineau's Sweeney Todd (1856). The Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with W.H.G. Kingston, R. M. Ballantyne and G. A. Henty specializing in the production of adventure fiction for boys. This inspired writers who normally catered to adult audience to essay such works, such as Robert Louis Stevenson writing Treasure Island for a child readership. In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries, while Geoffrey Trease, Rosemary Sutcliff and Esther Forbes brought a new sophistication to the historical adventure novel. Modern writers such as Mildred D. Taylor (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry) and Philip Pullman (the Sally Lockhart novels) have continued the tradition of the historical adventure. The modern children's adventure novel sometimes deals with controversial issues like terrorism (Robert Cormier, After the First Death, (1979)) and warfare in the Third World (Peter Dickinson, AK, (1990)).