Over the summer, in anticipation of a digital publishing project which I anticipate kickstarting some time this fall (more on that another time), I drew up a list of my favorite adventure novels without regard to sub-genre: espionage, crime/detection, hunted-man, swashbuckling, fantasy, science fiction, YA, I didn’t discriminate. That part was easy — I just toured my own bookshelves.
What turned out to be difficult was ranking the books qualitatively in any longitudinal way; so I decided to rank them instead by cultural decade.* This series of nine posts, the first of which you are reading now, will list what I consider to be the Top 32 adventure novels from the 19th Century, as well as the Top 21 adventure novels from each of the first eight cultural decades — the Oughts (1904–13), the Teens (1914–23), the Twenties (1924–33), the Thirties (1934–43), the Forties (1944–53), the Fifties (1954–63), the Sixties (1964–73), and the Seventies (1974–83) — of the 20th Century. Which adds up to a Top 200 list of my all-time favorites.
* By cultural decade, I mean — e.g. — the Twenties as opposed to the 1920s.
Many of the titles on this series of first-tier lists are sentimental favorites, which I discovered as an adolescent — on my father’s bookshelves (heavy emphasis on British detective and commando/espionage adventures of the 1930s–’60s); in the barn of my mother’s summer house in Maine, where my grandfather’s pile of 1940s and 1950s paperbacks stretched from floor to rafters; and in my Aunt Maggie’s summer house in Pennsylvania, the library shelves of which groaned not only with her favorite adventures from the 1920s–’50s but with my cousin Martin’s science fiction and fantasy adventures from the 1960s and ’70s; in my local library, in the Scholastic Book Club catalogs, at my friend’s houses, under the Christmas tree. Others I discovered in my 20s and 30s; I’m 45 now and still discovering new favorites.
There’s more! In this post (on 19th Century adventures), I’ve appended a list of 18 second-tier favorites — for a grand total of 50 Top Adventures of the 19th Century. And in subsequent posts, I’ve also appended a list of 29 second-tier favorites — for a grand total of 50 Top Adventures of each 20th Century cultural decade. All in all, then, I’ve listed 450 Top Adventures from 1805–1983. And there’s more! Each post also includes a third tier of adventures worth a mention.
A note about these third-tier lists of adventures: I hope HiLobrow readers will peruse them closely, because (unlike the titles on my Top 32 or 21 lists, and unlike most of the titles on my 2nd-tier favorite lists) they tend to have fallen into obscurity. Many are no longer in print; most haven’t been digitized yet. These are terrific adventures! If they weren’t, I wouldn’t have included them. Instead of thinking of them as “third-rate,” please think of the titles on my third-tier adventure lists as Most Deserving of Rediscovery.
This series of nine posts is just a starting place. My intent is to put these lists out there for discussion and criticism; I will make changes to them after posting — certainly to the 2nd- and 3rd-tier lists of favorite adventures, but perhaps even to the 1st-tier lists. Down the road, I’ll draw upon these lists to create genre-specific lists of favorite adventures. I’ll also draw upon these lists — particularly the 3rd-tier lists — for inspiration in my publishing project(s).
I also intend to create another series of adventure novel lists — perhaps 20 altogether — in which I’ll name my favorite adventure novels by theme. For example: stranded on a desert island, roaming the frontiers of civilization, living by your wits, treasure hunt, unlikely companions united for a common purpose, secret identity, cat-and-mouse game, escaping from prison, cracking a code, a test of one’s loyalty or honor or courage, a conspiracy plot, a revenge scheme, battling the elements, civilized people reverting to savagery. Soon!
I hope you enjoy the list below, and the series. Please leave comments. And if you’re interested in reading re-discovered science fiction adventures, check out the 10 titles from HiLoBooks — available online and in gorgeous paperback form.
THE TOP 32 ADVENTURE NOVELS OF THE 19th CENTURY
In chronological order:
* 1814. Walter Scott’s 18th c. frontier adventure Waverley. The novel — which sends a young Englishman adventuring in the highlands of Scotland, during the Jacobite uprising which sought to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the British throne — is regarded as the first historical novel. Note that Scotland, that savage tribal land just across the border from hyper-civilized England, was the original adventure frontier.
1817. Walter Scott’s Waverly adventure Rob Roy, in which a young Englishman travels to the Scottish Highlands in order to collect a debt stolen from his father. During his travels he encounters Rob Roy MacGregor — the folk hero and outlaw known as the Scottish Robin Hood.
* 1818. Mary Shelley’s Gothic science fiction adventure Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. From multiple points of view, we read about a brilliant scientist and his creation: a dehumanized creature who longs for love and friendship and, eventually, revenge. PS: There are two editions of the book; the 1831 “popular” edition was heavily revised and tends to be the one most widely read; scholars tend to prefer the 1818.
* 1820. Walter Scott’s 12th c. knightly adventure Ivanhoe, the protagonist of which makes his first appearance at a tourney in disguise, known only as The Disinherited Knight. (Also at that tourney is a mysterious archer named Locksley. Who can it be?) This popular book was single-handedly responsible for the medievalist craze in early 19th-century England.
1826. James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier adventure The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales were popular and influential (esp. in France!), and therefore deserve a mention here — despite the fact that Mark Twain tore Cooper a new one. Despite its flaws this novel does feature a truly epic pursuit.
1837–39. I realize that mentioning a Charles Dickens joint here opens up a can of worms, but Oliver Twist in particular is a great adventure, and the Artful Dodger is awesome.
* 1838. Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic sea adventure The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Poe’s only complete novel — about a teenager who stows away on a ship, is kidnapped by mutineers and pirates, encounters cannibals, and explores the Antarctic before discovering the key to all Western mystical traditions — has been described as “at once a mock nonfictional exploration narrative, adventure saga, bildungsroman, hoax, largely plagiarized travelogue, and spiritual allegory.”
* 1844. Alexandre Dumas’s 17th c. swashbuckling adventure The Three Musketeers introduces us to three unforgettable characters: the distinguished, highly educated Musketeer Athos; the religious and scholarly yet womanizing younger Musketeer Aramis; and the Falstaffian Musketeer Porthos. It is their sanguine companion D’Artagnan who coins the classic phrase “All for one, and one for all!”
1844–45. Alexandre Dumas’s avenger-type adventure The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s all here: a wronged man seeking revenge, a jailbreak, poisonings, smugglers, a sex slave (spoiler: she’s freed), and a treasure cave. Serialized in 117 installments, it’s on the long side; still, according to Luc Sante, this story is today as “immediately identifiable as Mickey Mouse, Noah’s flood, and the story of Little Red Riding Hood.”
1847. James Fenimore Cooper’s sea-going adventure The Crater. Fun fact: Adventure aficionados consider this one much superior to his Leatherstocking tales!
* 1851. Herman Melville‘s sea-going adventure Moby-Dick is, we all know, much more than it appears to be on the surface. It is an allegory of (maybe) man’s gnostic rage against the occluded world in which he lives, separated from real reality. Perhaps more than you want to know about how whaling works, but one of the all-time great yarns.
* 1862. Victor Hugo’s Gothic avenger-type adventure Les Misérables. Jean Valjean, a.k.a. Monsieur Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent, Monsieur Leblanc, and Urbain Fabre, struggles to lead a normal life — under various aliases — after serving a 19-year prison sentence for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family.
1867. Ouida’s frontier adventure Under Two Flags takes place in North Africa. With a twist: The hero feels morally and emotionally on the side of those he fights against.
* 1870. Jules Verne’s science-fiction adventure Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea introduces us to Captain Nemo, a scientific genius who roams the depths of the sea in his submarine — in quest of treasure, knowledge, and revenge. NB: The book inspired Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Le Beateau Ivre.”
1874. Jules Verne’s science-fiction Robinsonade The Mysterious Island. An engineer, a sailor, a young boy, a journalist, and an African American butler escape a Civil War prison in a hot air balloon and crash land on a Lost-type island in the South Pacific. Who is observing them, helping them? Marred by didactic lessons of all sorts.
* 1876. Jules Verne’s espionage adventure Michael Strogoff, considered one of Verne’s best books. When the Tartar Khan incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, Michael Strogoff, courier for Tsar Alexander II, is sent to Irkutsk on a crucial mission.
* 1883. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 18th c. treasure-hunt adventure Treasure Island, which led to the popular perception of pirates as we know them today: e.g., peg-legged, one-eyed. Note that the castaway character Ben Gunn is a parody of Daniel Defoe’s character Robinson Crusoe!
1884–45. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — note that Twain, who scorned Walter Scott-type romances, uses the term “adventure” sardonically. Still, Twain’s novel is a fun romp through the American South in its grotesquerie, and it offers authentic thrills along the way.
* 1885. H. Rider Haggard’s frontier adventure King Solomon’s Mines, which set a new standard for thrills — thanks to the author’s illiberal belief that denizens of England are so coddled that they’ve forgotten their own savage nature. The first novel written in English that was based on the African continent, and the first “Lost World” adventure. NB: Haggard would write 18 books featuring Allan Quatermain, the hero of King Solomon’s Mines.
* 1886. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 18th c. avenger-type adventure Kidnapped, in which young David Balfour is sold into servitude by his wicked uncle. With the help of Alan Breck, a daring Jacobite, David escapes and travels across Scotland by night — hiding from government soldiers by day.
1887. H. Rider Haggard’s treasure hunt/occult adventure She. Weird fun, particularly if you like reincarnation stuff. Spoiler: In a later novel, She and Quatermain will cross paths!
* 1888. Rudyard Kipling’s Haggard-esque frontier adventure The Man Who Would Be King. Two British adventurers become kings of a remote part of Afghanistan, because — it turns out — the Kafirs there practice a form of Masonic ritual and the adventurers know Masonic secrets.
1891. Arthur Conan Doyle’s knightly adventure The White Company. Perhaps more of an ironic homage to than a sardonic inversion of the genre. Actually one of his best adventures!
* 1894. Anthony Hope’s swashbuckling adventure The Prisoner of Zenda, which takes place in the fictional central European country of Ruritania, and which concerns a political decoy restoring the rightful king to the throne, was so influential that its genre is now called Ruritanian. Perhaps the first political thriller.
* 1896. H.G. Wells’s science fiction adventure The Island of Doctor Moreau. Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man, is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, who creates human-like beings from animals. After Moreau is killed, the Beast Folk begin to revert to their original animal instincts.
* 1897. Bram Stoker’s supernatural horror adventure Dracula, whose readers know what kind of monster the protagonists seek before they do. Described by Neil Gaiman as a “Victorian high-tech thriller,” the book’s use of cutting-edge technology — and true-crime story telling, from newspaper clippings to phonograph-recorded notes — creates an eerily realistic vibe.
* 1897. H.G. Wells’s science fiction adventure The Invisible Man. A scientist invents a way to change a body’s “refractive index” so that it absorbs and reflects no light. Experimenting upon himself, he becomes invisible… and plans a reign of terror. A great hunted-man type thriller: How do you catch an invisible man?
1899. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the protagonist of which is sent up a river in Africa to seek the European manager of a remote ivory station who has turned into a charismatic monster, is a sardonic inversion of yarns by adventure authors who didn’t give much thought to the colonialist and racist context within which their civilization-vs.-savagery narratives played out. “The horror! The horror!”
* 1900–01. Rudyard Kipling’s espionage adventure Kim, in which an Irish orphan in India not only becomes the disciple of a Tibetan lama, but is recruited by the British secret service to spy on Russian agents participating in the Great Game. In the process, he races across India; Kipling — an imperialist, but a keen observer of India all the same — brilliantly captures the essence of that country under the British Raj.
* 1901. Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective mystery adventure The Hound of the Baskervilles. Mystery adventures don’t have a large place on these lists of mine… because although they’re fun exercises in ratiocination and puzzle-solving, they’re often not particularly thrilling. Conan Doyle, however, is a great adventure writer. And this novel is not your typical Sherlock Holmes story; it is jam-packed with thrills and chills.
* 1903. Robert Erskine Childers’s espionage adventure The Riddle of the Sands can be a demanding read for those with no interest in sailing or timetables. But it’s a thrilling yarn nevertheless, one which sought to alert British readers to the danger of German invasion. Its protagonists are archetypes of the amateur adventure hero, the likes of whom would later appear so memorably in the novels of John Buchan.
* 1903. Jack London’s Klondike adventure The Call of the Wild, which expresses the author’s notion that because the veneer of civilization is fragile, humans revert to a state of primitivism with ease. PS: Note that London’s White Fang shows the flipside of this trajectory.
PS: According to my eccentric periodization scheme, about which I’ve written elsewhere, the first year of the 19th Century is 1805, and its final year is 1903.
PPS: The starred entries on the list are those titles I would include on a shorter list of the Top 21 19th-Century Adventures.
EIGHTEEN OTHERS
1831. Victor Hugo’s Gothic-type adventure The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
1868. Wilkie Collins’s detective adventure The Moonstone. Generally considered the first English-language detective novel.
1868. Jules Verne’s exploration adventure Around the World in Eighty Days.
1876. Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, which — like Huckleberry Finn — is simultaneously a sardonic inversion of Scott-type romantic adventures, and itself an exciting adventure. The Injun Joe scene in the cave… brrr!
1885. Jules Verne’s espionage adventure Mathias Sandorf features: islands, cryptograms, surprise revelations of identity, technically advanced hardware, a solitary figure bent on revenge, a pursuer who is himself pursued, and more. It’s the complete espionage adventure package.
1886. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A terrific psychological thriller. Very short — written in three days.
1887. Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective mystery A Study in Scarlet introduces readers to brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson.
1887. H. Rider Haggard’s frontier adventure Allan Quatermaine is one of many featuring Quatermaine, an English-born professional big game hunter who finds English cities and climate unbearable. We also meet, for the first time, Haggard’s influential Zulu warrior character, Umslopogaas.
1888. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Scott-esque knightly adventure The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses.
1891. H. Rider Haggard’s Viking adventure Eric Brighteyes. Considered one of his best books.
1893. Robert Louis Stevenson’s frontier adventure Catriona. An excellent sequel to Kidnapped.
1894. Rudyard Kipling’s collection of stories The Jungle Book. Here the different species of animals seem to represent different tribes or nations in hierarchical order. Not a novel, or I might include it on the Top 21 list. Followed by The Second Jungle Book (1895).
1896. H.G. Wells’s science fiction adventure The Island of Doctor Moreau.
1896. Arthur Conan Doyle’s story collection The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard is an ironic homage to the picaresque adventure genre. It’s very funny, in a dry British way. But at the same time the action is non-stop, and the protagonist is one of the greatest adventurers ever.
1898. H.G. Wells’s science fiction adventure The War of the Worlds.
1901. M.P. Shiel’s science fiction adventure The Purple Cloud.
1901. George Barr McCutcheon’s Ruritanian adventure novel Graustark: The Story of a Love Behind a Throne. Graustark is a fictional country in Eastern Europe; The Prisoner of Zenda is an obvious influence. This book and its sequels were enormously popular. I’m a fan.
1902. Owen Wister’s Western adventure The Virginian. Set on a Wyoming cattle ranch, this is the first Western. It’s also a Walter Scott-style knightly romance.
EVEN MORE
1805–14
1808. Heinrich von Kleist’s novella The Marquise of O features some adventure elements.
1810. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Gothic novel Zastrozzi (1810). An outlaw is obsessed with revenge against men who — it is eventually revealed — are his father and half-brother.
1812. Johann David Wyss’s Robinsonade The Swiss Family Robinson. Marred by moralizing, but (a) sustainable living is modeled, and (b) pirate attack!
1815. Walter Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake.
1815–24
1815. Walter Scott’s Waverly adventure Guy Mannering.
1815. Walter Scott’s Waverly adventure The Antiquary.
1820. Charles Maturin’s Gothic adventure Melmoth the Wanderer was a favorite of Charles Baudelaire’s and Oscar Wilde’s.
1821. James Fenimore Cooper’s espionage adventure The Spy. Set in America during the Revolution. Notable because most readers at the time were not interested in American literature with an American setting.
1821. Walter Scott’s Waverly adventure Kenilworth.
1815. Walter Scott’s Waverly adventure The Pirate.
1823. James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier adventure The Pioneers. Ace frontiersman Natty Bumppo first appears in this novel. One of the Leatherstocking series.
1825–33
1826. Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic science fiction adventure The Last Man.
1834–43
1834–35. Honoré de Balzac’s avenger-type adventure Le Père Goriot.
1840. James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier adventure The Prairie. One of the Leatherstocking series.
1840. James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier adventure The Pathfinder. One of the Leatherstocking series.
1841. James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier adventure The Deerslayer. One of the Leatherstocking series.
1843. Edgar Allan Poe’s hermeneutic adventure “The Gold-Bug.” A terrific tale of ratiocination which I’d include on the Top 21 list… except it isn’t a novel.
1844–53
TBD
1854–63
1860. Wilkie Collin’s thriller The Woman in White wasn’t the first “novel of sensation,” but it popularized the genre for a mass audience. Fun fact: the story was published in Charles Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round.
1864–73
1864. Jules Verne’s exploration adventure Journey to the Center of the Earth is pretty fun, though near-fatally marred, IMHO, by the didactic geography lessons. PS: Scholars claim that J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was heavily influenced by this novel.
1866. Charles Kingsley’s knightly adventure Hereward the Wake tells the story of the last Anglo-Saxon holdout against the Norman Conquest. Troubling admiration for Teutonic vigor… but a ripping yarn that was instrumental in elevating the real-life Hereward into an English folk-hero.
1874–83
1881. Mark Twain’s 16th c. avenger-type adventure The Prince and the Pauper, the humorist’s first attempt at historical fiction. Two young boys — Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father, and Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII — are identical in appearance.
1884–93
1885. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Prince Otto: A Romance is set in the imaginary Germanic state of Grünewald. That is, it’s a Ruritanian-type adventure avant la lettre.
1887. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventure The Sign of Four.
1889. Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is a sardonic inversion of Scott-esque medieval romances. But — as you might expect — still a fun story.
1889. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae. A tale of revenge set in Scotland, America, and India. I haven’t read it — does it deserve to be in my Top 50?
1889. Arthur Conan Doyle’s occult adventure The Mystery of Cloomber.
1892. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
1892. H. Rider Haggard’s Zulu adventure Nada the Lily. Considered one of his best books.
1892. Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical adventure The Great Shadow.
1893. Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical adventure The Refugees.
1894–1903
1894. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
1895. Stephen Crane’s military adventure The Red Badge of Courage. Overcome with shame after he flees from a Civil War battlefield, Private Henry Fleming longs for a wound — a “red badge of courage.”
1895. H.G. Wells’s science fiction adventure The Time Machine.
1896. Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical adventure Rodney Stone.
1896. John Buchan’s knightly adventure Sir Quixote of the Moors. His first novel, written when he was 19. Set in Scotland in the late 17th century.
1896. Anthony Hope’s collection of Ruritanian adventure/romance stories The Heart of Princess Osra. A prequel of sorts to The Prisoner of Zenda.
1897. Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical adventure Uncle Bernac.
1897. Rudyard Kipling’s sea-going adventure Captains Courageous. A spoiled rich teenager is saved from drowning by a fishing boat in the north Atlantic. I love the movie.
1898. Anthony Hope’s Ruritanian adventure Rupert of Hentzau. A sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda. Wildly popular in its day.
1899. John Buchan’s Lost Race adventure story “No-Man’s Land.” The narrator is a young Oxford Fellow in Celtic Studies who during a fishing and walking holiday stumbles on a small tribe of Picts. They have survived for millennia in Galloway cave.
1900. Morley Roberts’s frontier adventure The Fugitives. I picked this one up in a thrift store; it is forgotten utterly by contemporary readers. Possibly a YA novel? Anyway, a very exciting South African hunted-man plot.