ABSTRACT
Children’s literature in Britain in the nineteenth century went through three stages: the Sunday School tract; factual tales; and non-fictional and fictional adventure. 2 The last stage catered for boys of all social backgrounds – ‘from ragged school to country house’. 3 It celebrated evangelical decency, the work ethic and imperial expansion. The Victorian boy, primarily but not exclusively from the middle classes, was at one and the same time the predominant focus of the novelist’s attention, the idealized repository of these virtues and the representative symbol of male morality.
