ABSTRACT
Literary popularity is an unpredictable phenomenon. It can come overnight, as Rider Haggard found with King Solomon’s Mines or it can come gradually as with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Only occasionally do the right author, the right publisher and the right moment of the Zeitgeist coincide, as happened when the firm of Blackie and Son began to publish the boys’ adventure stories of G.A. Henty in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This chapter argues that Henty’s popularity came about because Henty so faithfully reflected the spirit of an imperialist age, because he used popular narrative devices, and because he was skilfully promoted by a vigorous and enterprising publisher.1
