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Speaking of Victorian novels, I’m headed back down that path.

This time around, my choice of literature is one of the books by George Alfred Henty. G. A. Henty wrote historical fiction for “boys,” and was immensely popular in that genre. The stories followed a formula where a young man, virtuous and competent, would seek adventure and find himself at the center of some major historical episode. These were books written to encourage manly traits and to inspire youth to achievement, while also teaching youngsters about history in a way that the textbooks of the day could not. The success during his career inspired others to mimic the style. But it was a style that went into decline in the decades following the First World War.

In the 1990s, Henty’s works began to be reprinted and reissued. They became popular among homeschoolers who sought texts that were educational, entertaining, and wholesome – all at the same time. It probably helped that, unlike outrageously expensive text books, Henty reprints would be relatively cheap due to the lack of copyright. Still, anything that uses “homeschool” and “wholesome” in the same sentence is bound to be polarizing in today’s environment.

Even in his own time, Henty was controversial, primarily due to his imperialistic and nationalistic themes. Fast-forward to today and one might imagine that the bulk of his 122 works of historical fiction might be problematic. Obviously, heroes like the lad who rode with Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War or served as an agent of manifest destiny in his book about Haiti (Hayti) are going to run afoul of our current zeitgeist. Even his most innocuous of works glorify white, western civilization at the expense of the rest of the world. It is almost a perfect storm for today’s activist. Rachel Maddow, for example, has used Oregon Senator Art Robinson’s promotion of Henty within his home school curriculum as proof of Robinson’s malignant character.

As for myself, I knew none of this when I picked up this book from Amazon. E-versions of Henty’s works are readily available for download and as free Kindle books at Amazon. My motivation was the recognition that I know absolutely nothing about the Seven Years War. I hoped to find a good introduction without committing to a pricey historical text. From that angle, a Young Adult historical fiction seem like just the right level of casual investment for my purposes. The fact that it was free made it an easy sell. I didn’t learn about the controversy until after I had started reading.

With Frederick the Great: A Story of the Seven Years’ War would have little to recommend it beyond being free. The “spirited young lad” character is too cliched for the modern reader, and I’d think that would go double for the actual “young adult” who is targeted – either by Henty in his day or by a homeschooling mom. Technical changes in style, over the course of a century, meant that the first chapter was difficult for me to follow. Nevertheless, I got used to it and it’s been a fairly easy read from Chapter Two onwards. What it does accomplish, much like the book Ben Hur, is to put a human experience onto a reading of history. Rather than a list of numbers, dates, and place-names, as the traditional grade-school history was apt to do, here we have an actual person who travels from place to place and experiences it all in the same way the reader would.

The book doesn’t measure up to the best of today’s mass-market historical non-fiction. It is also a weak substitute for well written historical fiction. I do wonder, though. In an age where a story like Henty’s works is going to be assailed on national TV, will Henty himself be one of only limited remaining opportunities for for readers of the future to explore certain historical periods? Will there be periods of which we may not speak, except to denigrate the stain that Western Civilization has left upon the world? This is probably way too pessimistic, at least anytime soon, but neither do I anticipate a modern treatment of this period to show up on the Times best fiction list. Especially one that allows the likes of Frederick the Great and George II to play the good guys.

In any case, its nice to know that there are some 121 other free books, that also make for a quick read, to provide introductions to any number of periods with which I am entirely unfamiliar.

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