A treasury of late Victorian adventure stories that pulses with danger, daring, and the fierce hearts of young people tested by crisis. The collection opens with "How Jean Became a Soldier," a gripping tale of twelve-year-old Jean le Grand, who tending his mother's farm near Waterloo discovers his own father has turned traitor to Napoleon. Mounting a desperate ride across enemy lines to warn the English general, Jean transforms from farm boy to drummer boy in a narrative that never loosens its grip. The anthology hurtles onward through pirate ships and shipwrecks, through maidens facing cannon fire and boys forging brotherhoods in the crucible of war. G.A. Henty, G. Manville Fenn, and their contemporaries understood something essential about adventure stories: they are really about what people will do when everything is at stake. This is the golden age of children's literature at its finest, when stories were built to quicken the pulse and stir the soul.
