All 51 G. A. Henty Books, Sorted by the War They Are About
G. A. Henty published something like eighty novels for boys, and the problem with all of them is the titles. With Clive in India, With Wolfe in Canada, With Frederick the Great, With Lee in Virginia, With Kitchener in the Soudan — you cannot tell them apart, and the subtitles only help if you already know when the Ashanti War was.
So here are the 51 in our library sorted by the period each one covers. If you are reading Henty for a history course, or handing one to a child who has just got interested in Rome, this is the list you want.
A note first: Henty is worth reading and worth reading critically. He was a war correspondent who turned imperial confidence into a formula, and the books carry the racial and colonial attitudes of 1880s Britain openly rather than incidentally. They are also, when he is on form, extremely good at the mechanics of a campaign — supply, terrain, why an army loses. Both things are true at once.
The ancient world
- The Young Carthaginian — Hannibal's march on Rome, seen from the Carthaginian side. Unusually, Henty puts you with the invaders.
- Beric the Briton — the Roman conquest of Britain and Boudica's revolt.
- For the Temple — the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70. The bleakest ending he wrote.
Saxons, Vikings and the Norman Conquest
- The Dragon and the Raven — Alfred against the Danes.
- Wulf the Saxon — Harold Godwinson, Stamford Bridge and Hastings.
The Crusades
- Winning His Spurs — the Third Crusade with Richard I.
- The Boy Knight — the same ground under a different title; read one or the other.
- A Knight of the White Cross — the Knights Hospitaller and the 1480 siege of Rhodes.
Medieval England, Scotland and France
- In Freedom's Cause — Wallace and Bruce, and the best of his Scottish books.
- St. George for England — Crécy and Poitiers.
- At Agincourt — 1415, from inside a besieged household in Paris first.
- Both Sides the Border — Hotspur, Glendower, and the Welsh and Scottish marches under Henry IV.
- A March on London — the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and Henty at his least comfortable with a popular rising.
The Reformation and the wars of religion
- By Pike and Dyke — the Dutch revolt against Spain.
- Saint Bartholomew's Eve — the French wars of religion and the 1572 massacre. Also in the library as St. Bartholomew's Eve.
- The Lion of the North — Gustavus Adolphus and the Swedish intervention in Germany.
- Won by the Sword — the Thirty Years' War under Turenne and Condé.
Elizabethans and the New World
- Under Drake's Flag — privateering with Drake, and the closest Henty gets to a straight adventure story.
- By Right of Conquest — Cortés and the fall of Tenochtitlan.
Civil War and Restoration England
- Friends, though Divided — two boys on opposite sides in 1642. One of his better ideas and he mostly honours it.
- When London Burned — the plague year and the Great Fire.
Marlborough and the Spanish Succession
- The Cornet of Horse — Blenheim and Ramillies.
- The Bravest of the Brave — Peterborough's Spanish campaign.
The eighteenth century
- With Frederick the Great — the Seven Years' War in Europe.
- With Wolfe in Canada — the same war in North America, ending on the Plains of Abraham.
- With Clive in India — Plassey and the founding of British India.
- In the Irish Brigade — an Irishman in French service.
- Held Fast For England — the Great Siege of Gibraltar.
- True to the Old Flag — the American Revolution from the loyalist side, which is the interesting reason to read it.
- The Young Buglers — the Peninsular War.
Revolution and Napoleon
- In the Reign of Terror — an English boy in a French household through 1793.
- No Surrender! — the Vendée rising, a subject almost nothing else in English fiction touches.
- At Aboukir and Acre — Napoleon in Egypt and Syria.
- By Conduct and Courage — the Nelson-era navy, and his best sea book.
- One of the 28th — Waterloo.
India and the East
- The Tiger of Mysore — Tipu Sultan and the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War.
- At the Point of the Bayonet — the Maratha wars.
- On the Irrawaddy — the First Anglo-Burmese War.
- Rujub, the Juggler — the 1857 rising, written for adults rather than boys and much darker for it.
- Among Malay Pirates — a short one, barely a novel.
The Victorian colonial wars
- By Sheer Pluck — the Ashanti War of 1873, which Henty covered as a correspondent.
- Through Three Campaigns — Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti, late and formulaic.
- With Kitchener in the Soudan — Atbara and Omdurman.
- With Buller in Natal — the Second Boer War, published while it was still being fought.
The American Civil War
- With Lee in Virginia — a Confederate protagonist Henty makes an abolitionist so the reader can like him. Read it knowing that is what he is doing, and note that it is his only novel about the war.
Nineteenth-century Europe and everything else
- The Young Franc Tireurs — irregulars in the Franco-Prussian War, which he also covered in person.
- A Girl of the Commune — the siege of Paris and the Commune, with a female lead.
- In the Heart of the Rockies — Colorado prospecting, no war at all.
- The Treasure of the Incas — treasure hunting in Peru.
- Colonel Thorndyke's Secret — a straight mystery with a stolen Indian jewel. Closer to Wilkie Collins than to Henty.
Where to start
If you want one Henty to see whether he suits you, take The Young Carthaginian or In Freedom's Cause — both have a cause the modern reader can sit behind, which removes the friction that spoils some of the colonial books. If you want the best-written, it is By Conduct and Courage.
Everything above is public domain and free to read in the browser on BingeReaders, with nothing to install. Fifty of them are on his author page, with one filed under the shorter spelling of his name.
For more in the same territory without the empire: 39 historical novels, 34 adventure stories and 14 books on the American Civil War, or our guide to free classic adventure novels.